The Portion of Labor

utside the little world, just large enough to contain them, in which she had dwelt all her life with her parents, her aunt, her grandmother, and her doll. She tr

nst the odds of life which has taken the poor off their foot hold of understanding since the beginning of the world had aged her. She had lost something out of her childhood. She dreaded to go down-stairs; she had a feeling of shamefacedness struggling within her; she was afraid that her father and mother would look at her sharply, then look again, and ask her what the matter was, and she would not know what to say. When she went down,

f Lloyd's, and their troubles in consequence. "She heard too much last night," Andrew said;

to pieces thinkin' we were awful poor, and

if I can help it, no matter

to spend her time over that, when she had so much sewing of her own to do, Eva replied with a gay,

be so silly as to put off yo

get married, anyhow," Eva said, still laughing. "I

sister; "do you know

l, I reckon

y, and he not likin' it, ten chances to o

won't have been the one to d

ny returned, looking at her sister wi

he's shaved and has on a clean shirt or not, 'cause he's got loaded down with debt, and the grocery-man and the butcher after him, and no work, and me and the children drag

work after he was

un the risk of that; but I'm go

he'll get wor

he began to sing "Nancy

r. "Why, of course you can have it, child," said her mother; "but wha

make my dol

that beautiful doll would look in a dress made of that. Why, you '

my new blue silk to make y

enance she was arrayed like a very scullion among dolls, in the remnant

n the coldest weather. You ought to be thankful to have this." For all which good advice and philosophy the little mother of the doll would often look at the discarded beauty of the wardrobe, with tears in her eyes and fondest pity in her heart; but she never flinched. When the young man Nahum Beals came

in your silk dress; why, I don't know but he would

o be stented in one single thing; remember that," Andrew told Fanny, with angry emphasis. "That little, del

fore it comes to that,"

goin' to hire a horse and sleigh and take her sleigh-ridin' this afternoon. I

hout that," Fanny

e ain't g

onies of happiness which would echo through her future, for no one can estimate the immortality of some little delight of a child. In all her life, Ellen never forgot that sleigh-ride. It was a very cold day, and the virgin snow did not melt at all; the wind blew a soft, steady pressure from the west, and its wings were evident from the glistening crystals which were lifted and borne along. The trees held their shining boughs against the blue of the sky, and burned and blazed here and there as with lamps of diamonds. The child looked at them, and they lit her soul. Her little face, between the swan's-down puffs of her hood, deepened in color like a rose; her blue eyes shone; she laughed and dimpled sil

d her be-shawled shoulders with a shivering hunch of disgust. "Can't you tell that girl not to

drew said; "the poor girl's

Zelotes, alluding to something which had happene

weethearts, whole families drawn by the sober old horse as old as the grown-up children; rakish young men driving stable teams, leaning forward with long circles of whip over the horses' backs, leaving the scent of ciga

and there's Nell White and Eaat Ry

in' their money if Lloyd's has shu

or Andrew ain't," Eva

, proudly, "though I shouldn't think it was

turn deathly white, and catch her breath with a gasp in spite of herself, though that was all. She held up her head like a queen and turned her handsome white face full towards Jim Tenny and the girl for whom he had jilted her

y, hastily. "See that feather in her bonnet blow; it's standin' up straight." But Fanny's man?uvre to turn the attention of her mother-in-law was of no avail, for nothing short

en she added, pointing to an advancing sleigh. "Good land, there's that Smith girl.

s asked again. She leaned forward and gav

," Eva answe

that girl

Aggie

ed under the sleigh cushion for an extra shawl which she had brought, and handed it up to Eva. "Don't you want this extra shaw

," Eva replied

here. You must take all the wind. You can wrap this sha

is kindness of her old disapprover which touched her deeply, and moved her to weakness more than had the sight of her r

if that girl asked Jim to take

ffectation of secrecy. "I don't care which way 'twas." She sat up straig

genteel enough to wear," Mrs. Zelotes s

thought she saw the lady's head at a front window, and the front door opened and Cynthia came down the walk with a rich sweep of b

ncy that Andrew and Cynthia might make a match. She had seen no reason to the contrary, and she always

down the walk to-day, th

little more money of late years. Cynthia's grandfather, old Squire Lennox, used to keep the store, and live in one side of it, and her mother's father, Calvin Goodenough, kept the tavern. I dunn

p their bringin' up,"

ickly, partly to avert the impending to

Brewsters eyed Norman Lloyd's Russian coat with the wide sable collar turned up around his proud, clear-cut face, the fur-gauntleted hands which held the lines and the whip, for Mr. Lloyd preferred to drive his own blooded pair, both from a love of hors

er face was superb with health and enjoyment and good-humor. Her cheeks were a deep crimson in the cold wind; she smiled radiantly all the time as if at life itself. She had no thought of fear behind those prancing bays which seemed so frightful to Mrs. Zelotes, used to the steadiest stable team a few times during the year, and driven with a wary eye to railroad crossings and a sense of one's mortality in the midst of life strong upon her. Mrs. Norman Lloyd ha

heard the night before, and the sleigh swept by, Mrs. Lloyd's rosy face smiling back over the black fringe of danc

woman," said she, fiercely, between

shook the lines over the steady stabl

o her husband with somewhat timid and deprecating en

ed, abstractedly. He had not

just passed. She is just the sweetest child I ever laid eyes on," and Norman Lloyd smiled vaguely and coldly, and

nt of the closing of the factory," remarked Mrs. Lloyd,

tes they reached the factory neighborhood. There were three factories: two of them on opposite sides of the road, humming with labor, and puffing

thrown out of work," Mrs. Lloyd said, looking up at

action were in most cases self-evolved and entirely self-regulated. He had said not a word to any one, not even to his foreman, of his purpose to close the factory until it was quite fixed; he had asked no advice, explained to no one the course of reasoning which led to his doing so. Rowe was a city of strikes, but there had never been

ed, thinking of the little girl's face peeping out between h

g a special railroad train every day in the week to go to Boston would b

e. "I wonder," said she, "if they feel sort of desperate, and think they won't have enough for their families, anyway-that is, enough to feed them, and they might as well get a li

"and that is the reason why you

r husband was much wiser than she, and that the world couldn't be regulated by women's hearts, pleasa

and oldest-fashioned femininity, a very woman of St. Pau

cked against the wall), cold as it was, watching the sleighs pass, and two or three knots gathered together for the purposes of confabulation. Nearly all of them were employés

ng eyes, saw the Lloyds approaching, the rumble of conversation suddenly ceased. They all stood staring when t

e, and his head was as immovable as if carved in stone. The other men, with their averted eyes, made a curious, motionless tableau of