“I didn’t want another man,” replied Fanny, half angrily, half tenderly.  “You make me all out of patience, Andrew Brewster.  What’s the need of Ellen going to work right away?  Maybe by-and-by she can get an easy school.  Then, we’ve got that money in the bank.”

Andrew looked away from her with his face set.  Fanny did not know yet about his withdrawal of the money for the purpose of investing in mining-stocks.  He never looked at her but the guilty secret seemed to force itself between them like a wedge of ice.

“Then Grandma Brewster has got a little something,” said Fanny.

“Only just enough for herself,” said Andrew.  Then he added, fiercely, “Mother can’t be stinted of her little comforts even for Ellen.”

“I ’ain’t never wanted to stint your mother of her comforts,” Fanny retorted, angrily.

“She ’ain’t got but a precious little, unless she spends her principal,” said Andrew.  “She ’ain’t got more’n a hundred and fifty or so a year clear after her taxes and insurance are paid.”

“I ain’t saying anything,” said Fanny.  “But I do say you’re dreadful foolish to take on so when you’ve got so much to fall back on, and that money in the bank.  Here you haven’t had to touch the interest for quite a while and it has been accumulating.”

It was agreed between the two that Ellen must say nothing to her grandmother Brewster about going to work.

“I believe the old lady would have a fit if she thought Ellen was going to work,” said Fanny.  “She ’ain’t never thought she ought to lift her finger.”

So Ellen was charged on no account to say anything to her grandmother about the possible necessity of her going to work.

“Your grandmother’s awful proud,” said Fanny, “and she’s always thought you were too good to work.”

“I don’t think anybody is too good to work,” replied Ellen, but she uttered the platitude with a sort of mental reservation.  In spite of herself, the attitude of worship in which she had always seen all who belonged to her had spoiled her a little.  She did look at herself with a sort of compunction when she realized the fact that she might have to go to work in the shop some time.  School-teaching was different, but could she earn enough school-teaching?  There was a sturdy vein in the girl.  All the time she pitied herself she blamed herself.

“You come of working-people, Ellen Brewster.  Why are you any better than they?  Why are your hands any better than their hands, your brain than theirs?  Why are you any better than the other girls who have gone to work in the shops?  Do you think you are any better than Abby Atkins?”

And still Ellen used to look at herself with a pitying conviction that she would be out of place at a bench in the shoe-factory, that she would suffer a certain indignity by such a course.  The realization of a better birthright was strong upon her, although she chided herself for it.  And everybody abetted her in it.  When she said once to Abby Atkins, whom she encountered one day going home from the shop, that she wondered if she could get a job in her room in the fall, Abby turned upon her fiercely.