ly with her other hand. She was repeating
what she had said before. Ellen had heard her indistinctly through
the door.

"Yes, I mean just what I say," she cried. "Get up and go to work, if
you are men! Stop hanging around stores and corners, and talking
about the tyranny of the rich, and go to work, and make them pay you
something for it, anyhow. This has been kept up long enough. Get up
and go to work, if you don't want those belonging to you to starve."

Abby caught sight of Ellen, pale and breathless, in the door, with
her mother looking over her shoulder, and she addressed her with
renewed violence. "Come here, Ellen," she said, "and put yourself on
my side. We've got to give in."

"You go away," cried little Amabel, in a shrill voice, looking
around Ellen's arm; but nobody paid any attention to her.

"I never will," returned Ellen, with a great flash, but her voice
trembled.

"You've got to," said Abby. "I tell you there's no other way."

"I'll die before I give up," cried Lee, in a loud, threatening
voice.

"I'm with ye," said Tom Peel.

Dixon and the young laster who sat beside him looked at each other,
but said nothing. Dixon wrinkled his forehead over his pipe.

"Then you'd better go to work quick, before some that I know of, who
are enough sight better worth saving than you are, starve," replied
Abby, unshrinkingly. "If I could I would go to Lloyd's and open it
on my own account to-morrow. I believe in bravery, but nothing
except fools and swine jump over precipices."

Abby passed through the room, sprinkling rain-drops from her
drenched skirts, and went into the kitchen with Ellen. Fanny cast an
angry glance at her, then a solicitous one at her dripping garments.

"Abby Atkins, you haven't got any rubbers on," said she.

"Rubbers!" repeated Abby.

"You just slip off those wet skirts, and Amabel will fetch you down
Ellen's old black petticoat and brown dress. Amabel--"

But Abby seated herself peremptorily before the kitchen stove and
extended one soaked little foot in its shabby boot. "I'm past
thinking or caring about wet skirts," said she. "Good Lord, what do
wet skirts matter? We can't make wrappers any longer. We had to sell
the sewing-machine yesterday to pay the rent or be turned out, and
we haven't got a thing to eat in the house except potatoes and a
little flour. We haven't had any meat for a week. Nice fare for a
man like poor father and a girl like Maria! We have come down to the