and recently, certain things she had
said, that he had passed over lightly and somewhat uncomfortably.

"That's ridiculous, Miss Ellen. But even if it were true, which it
isn't, don't you think it would be rather nice of her?" He smiled.

"I do not. I heard you going out last night, Willy. Did you find her?"

"She is at the Doyles'. I didn't see her."

"That'll finish it," Ellen prophesied, somberly. She glanced around the
parlor, at the dust on the furniture, at the unwashed baseboard, at the
unwound clock on the mantel shelf.

"If you're going to stay here I will," she announced abruptly. "I owe
that much to your mother. I've got some money. I'll take what they'd
pay some foreigner who'd throw out enough to keep another family." Then,
seeing hesitation in his eyes: "That woman's sick, and you've got to be
looked after. I could do all the work, if that--if the girl would help
in the evenings."

He demurred at first. She would find it hard. They had no luxuries, and
she was accustomed to luxury. There was no room for her. But in the
end he called Edith and Mrs. Boyd, and was rather touched to find Edith
offering to share her upper bedroom.

"It's a hole," she said, "cold in winter and hot as blazes in summer.
But there's room for a cot, and I guess we can let each other alone."

"I wish you'd let me move up there, Edith," he said for perhaps the
twentieth time since he had found out where she slept, "and you would
take my room."

"No chance," she said cheerfully. "Mother would raise the devil if you
tried it." She glanced at Ellen's face. "If that word shocks you, you're
due for a few shocks, you know."

"The way you talk is your business, not mine," said Ellen austerely.

When they finally departed on a half-run Ellen was established as
a fixture in the Boyd house, and was already piling all the cooking
utensils into a wash boiler and with grim efficiency was searching for
lye with which to clean them.

Two weeks later, the end of June, the strike occurred. It was not,
in spite of predictions, a general walk-out. Some of the mills,
particularly the smaller plants, did not go down at all, and with
reduced forces kept on, but the chain of Cardew Mills was closed. There
was occasional rioting by the foreign element in outlying districts, but
the state constabulary handled it easily.

Dan was out of work, and the loss of his pay was a serious matter in
the little house. He had managed to lay by a hundred do