adrift in midwinter."

At noon Robert put on his fur-lined coat and left the factory,
springing into the sleigh, which had drawn up before the door with a
flurry of bells. He had an errand in the next town that afternoon,
and was not going to return. When the sleigh had slid swiftly out of
sight through the storm, which was lightening a little, the people
in the office turned to one another with a curious expression of
liberty, but even then little was said. Nellie Stone was at the desk
eating her luncheon; Ed Flynn and Dennison and one of the lasters,
who had looked in and then stepped in when he saw Lloyd was gone,
were there. The laster, who was young and coarsely handsome, had an
admiration for the pretty girl at the desk. Presently she addressed
him, with her mouth full of apple-pie.

"Say, George, what are you fellows going to do?" she asked.

Dennison glanced keenly from one to the other; Flynn shrugged his
shoulders and looked out of the window.

"Looks as if it was clearing up," he remarked.

"What are you going to do?" asked Nellie Stone again, with a
coquettish flirt of her blond fluff of hair.

"Grin and bear it, I s'pose," replied the young laster, with an
adoring look at her.

"My land! grin and bear a cut of ten per cent.? Well, I don't think
you've got much spunk, I must say. Why don't you strike?"

"Who's going to feed us?" replied the laster, in a tender voice.

"Feed you? Oh, you don't want much to eat. Join the union. It's
ridiculous so few of the men in Lloyd's belong to it, anyway; and
then the union will feed you, won't it?"

"The union did not do what it promised in the Scarboro strike,"
interposed Dennison, curtly.

"Oh, we all know where you are, Frank Dennison," said the girl, with
a soft roll of her blue eyes. "Besides, it's easy to talk when you
aren't hit. Your wages aren't cut. But here is George May here, he's
in a different box."

"He's got nobody dependent on him, anyway," said Flynn.

"If I wasn't going to get married I'd strike," cried the young man,
with a fervent glance at the girl. She colored, half pleased, half
angry, and the other men chuckled. She took another bite of pie to
conceal her confusion. She preferred Flynn to the laster, and while
she was not averse to proving to the former the triumph of her
charms over another man, did not like too much concessions.

"You'd better go and eat your dinner, George May," she said, in her
sweet, shrill voice. "First t