a foreman who was standing by before she was well out of
hearing.

"I like that!" he said. "Mrs. Briggs read about that girl in the
paper last night, and the strike wouldn't have been on at Lloyd's if
it hadn't been for her. I would as soon take a lighted match into a
powder-magazine."

The foreman grinned. "She's a pretty, mild-looking thing," he said;
"doesn't look as if she could say boo to a goose."

"That's all you can tell," returned Briggs. "Deliver me from a
light-complexioned woman. They're all the very devil. Mrs. Briggs
says it's the same girl that read that composition that made such a
stir at the high-school exhibition. She'd make more trouble in a
factory than a dozen ordinary girls, and just now, when everything
is darned ticklish-looking."

"That's so," assented the foreman, "and all the more because she's
good-looking."

"I don't know what you call good-looking," returned Briggs.

He had two daughters, built upon the same heavy lines as himself and
wife, and he adored them. Insensibly he regarded all more delicate
feminine beauty as a disparagement of theirs. As Briggs spoke, the
foreman seemed to see in the air before his eyes the faces of the
two Briggs girls, large and massive, and dull of hue, the feminine
counterpart of their father's.

"Well, maybe you're right," said he, evasively. "I suppose some
might call her good-looking."

As he spoke he glanced out of the window at Ellen's retreating
figure, moving away over the snow-path with an almost dancing motion
of youth and courage, though she was sorely hurt. The girl had
scarcely ever had a hard word said to her in her whole life, for she
had been in her humble place a petted darling. She had plenty of
courage to bear the hard words now, but they cut deeply into her
unseasoned heart.

Ellen went on past the factories to the main street of Rowe. She had
no idea of giving up her efforts to obtain employment. She said to
herself that she must have work. She thought of the stores, that
possibly she might obtain a chance to serve as a sales-girl in one
of them. She actually began at the end of the long street, and
worked her way through it, with her useless inquiries, facing
proprietors and superintendents, but with no success. There was not
a vacancy in more than one or two, and there they wished only
experienced hands. She found out that her factory record told
against her. The moment she admitted that she had worked in a
factory the co