“Suppose,” said Robert, as they walked on, “that all the market-men who had artistic tastes had art educations and set up studios and painted pictures, who would keep the markets?”

He spoke gayly.  His manner that night was younger and merrier than Ellen had ever seen it.  She was naturally rather grave herself.  What she had seen of life had rather disposed her to a hush of respect than to hilarity, but somehow his mood began to infect her.

“I don’t know,” she answered, laughing, “I suppose somebody would keep the markets.”

“Yes, but they would not be as good markets.  That is, they would not do as artistic markets, and they would not serve the higher purpose of catering to the artistic taste of man, as well as to his bodily needs.”

“Perhaps a picture like that is just as well and better than it would be painted and hung on a wall,” Ellen admitted, reflectively.

“Just so—­why is it not?” Robert said, in a pleased voice.

“Yes, I think it is,” said Ellen.  “I do think it is better, because everybody can see it there.  Ever so many people will see it there who would not go to picture-galleries to see it, and then—­”

“And then it may go far to dignify their daily needs,” said Robert.  “For instance, a poor man about to buy his to-morrow’s dinner may feel his soul take a little fly above the prices of turnips and cabbages.”

“Maybe,” said Ellen, but doubtfully.

“Don’t you think so?”

“The prices of turnips and cabbages may crowd other things out,” Ellen replied, and her tone was sad, almost tragic.  “You see I am right in it, Mr. Lloyd,” she said, earnestly.

“You mean right in the midst of the kind of people whom necessity forces to neglect the aesthetic for the purely useful?”

“Yes,” said Ellen.  Then she added, in an indescribably pathetic voice, “People have to live first before they can see, and they can’t think until they are fed, and one needs always to have had enough turnips and cabbages to eat without troubling about the getting them, in order to see in them anything except food.”

Lloyd looked at her curiously.  “Decidedly this child can think,” he reflected.  He shrugged his arm, on which Ellen’s hand lay, a little closer to his side.

Just then they were passing the great factories—­Lloyd’s, and Briggs’s, and Maguire’s.  Many of the windows in Briggs’s and Maguire’s reflected light from the moon and the electric-lamps on the street.  Lloyd’s was all dark except for one brilliant spark of light, which seemed to be threading the building like a will-o’-the-wisp.  “That is the night-watchman,” said Robert.  “He must have a dull time of it.”

“I should think he might be afraid,” said Ellen.

“Afraid of what?”

“Of ghosts.”

“Ghosts in a shoe-shop?” asked Robert, laughing.

“I don’t believe there has been another building in the whole city which has held so many heart-aches, and I always wondered if they didn’t make ghosts instead of dead people,” Ellen said.