ad it straight. Wait till you get to the shop."

"I don't believe it."

"You wait. Norman Lloyd was as hard as nails, and the young one is
just like him." Abby looked relentlessly at Ellen.

"Maybe it isn't so," whispered Maria to Ellen.

"I don't believe it is," responded Ellen, but Abby heard them, and
turned with a vicious jerk.

"Well, you wait!" said she.

The moment Ellen reached the factory she realized that something
unwonted had happened. There were groups of men, talking, oblivious
even of the blinding storm, which was coming in the last few minutes
with renewed fury, falling in heavy sheets like dank shrouds.

Ellen saw one man in a muttering group throw out an arm, whitened
like a branch of a tree, and shake a rasped, red fist at the
splendid Russian sleigh of the Lloyd's, which was just gliding out
of sight with a flurry of bells and a swing of fur tails, the whole
surmounted by the great fur hat of the coachman. Abby turned and
looked fiercely at Ellen.

"What did I tell you?" she cried.

Even then Ellen would not believe. She caught a glimpse of Robert's
fair head at the office window, and a great impulse of love and
loyalty came over her.

"I don't believe it," she said aloud to Maria. Maria held her arm
tightly.

"Maybe it isn't so," she said.

But when they entered the room where they worked, there was a sullen
group before a placard tacked on the wall. Ellen pressed closely,
and saw what it was--a reduced wage-list. Then she went to her
machine.

Chapter XLVIII

Ellen had a judicial turn of mind, as her school-master had once
said of her. She was able to look at matters from more than one
stand-point, but she reasoned with a New Testament clearness of
impartiality. She was capable of uncompromising severity, since she
brought such a clear light of youth and childhood to bear upon even
those things which needed shadows for their true revelation.
Everything was for her either black or white. She had not lived long
enough, perhaps she never would, for a comprehension of half-tones.
The situation to her mind was perfectly simple, and she viewed it
with a candor which was at once terrible and cruel, for it involved
cruelty not only to Robert but to herself. She said to herself, here
was this rich man, this man with accumulation of wealth, not one
dollar of which he had earned himself, either by his hands or his
brains, but which had been heaped up for his uncle by the heart and