and were awakening within her as freshly as if
they had just happened.

She remembered her father, exiled in his prime from his place in the
working world by this system of arbitrary employment; she remembered
her aunt in the asylum; poor little Amabel; her own mother toiling
beyond her strength on underpaid work; Maria coughing her life away.
She remembered her own life twisted into another track from the one
which she should have followed, and there was for the time very
little reason or justice in her. That injustice which will arise to
meet its kind in equal combat had arisen in her heart. Still, she
yielded. "Perhaps you are right," she said to Sargent. She had
always liked John Sargent, and she respected him.

"I am sure it is the best course," he said to her, still in that
low, confidential voice.

It ended in a committee of four--John Sargent, Amos Lee, Tom Peel,
and one of the older lasters, a very respectable man, a deacon in
the Baptist Church--being appointed to wait on Robert Lloyd that
evening.

When the one-o'clock whistle blew, Ellen went back to her machine.
She was very pale, but she was conscious of a curious steadiness of
all her nerves. Abby leaned towards her, and spoke low in the roar
of wheels.

"I'll back you up, if I die for it," she said.

But Sadie Peel, on the other side, spoke quite openly, with a laugh
and shrug of her shoulders. "Land," she said, "father'll be with
you. He's bound to strike. He struck when he was in McGuire's. Catch
father givin' up anything. But as for me, I wish you'd all slow up
an' stick to work, if you do get a little less. If we quit work I
can't have a nearseal cape, and I've set my heart on a nearseal cape
this winter."

Chapter LII

Ellen resolved that she would say as little as possible about the
trouble at home that night. She did not wish her parents to worry
over it until it was settled in one way or another.

When her mother asked what they had done about the wage-cutting, she
replied that a committee had been appointed to wait on Mr. Lloyd
that evening, and talk it over with him; then she said nothing more.

"He won't give in if he's like his uncle," said Fanny.

Ellen went on eating her supper in silence. Her father glanced at
her with sharp solicitude.

"Maybe he will," said he.

"No, he won't," returned Fanny.

Ellen was very pale and her eyes were bright. After supper she went
to the window and pressed her face against the gl