Ellen looked at the other girl in a kind of rage of maidenly shame.  “Why have I got to get married, anyway?” she demanded.  “Isn’t there anything in this world besides getting married?  Why do you all talk so about me?  You don’t seem so bent on getting married yourself.  If you think so much of marriage, why don’t you get married yourself, and let me alone?”

“Nobody wants to marry me that I know of,” replied Abby, quite simply.  Then she, too, blazed out.  “Get married!” she cried.  “Do you really think I would get married to the kind of man who would marry me?  Do you think I could if I loved him?” A great wave of red surged over the girl’s thin face, her voice trembled with tenderness.  Ellen knew at once, with a throb of sympathy and shame, that Abby did love some one.

“Do you think I would marry him if I loved him?” demanded Abby, stiffening herself into a soldier-like straightness.  “Do you think?  I tell you what it is,” she said, “I was lookin’ only to-day at David Mendon at the cutting-bench, cutting away with his poor little knife.  I’d like to know how many handles he’s worn out since he began.  There he was, putting the pattern on the leather, and cuttin’ around it, standin’ at his window, that’s a hot place in summer and a cold one in winter, and there’s where he’s stood for I don’t know how many years since before I was born.  He’s one of the few that Lloyd’s has hung on to when he’s got older, and I thought to myself, good Lord, how that poor man must have loved his wife, and how he must love his children, to be willin’ to turn himself into a machine like that for them.  He never takes a holiday unless he’s forced into it; there he stands and cuts and cuts.  If I were his wife, I would die of shame and pity that I ever led him into it.  Do you think I would ever let a man turn himself into a machine for me, if I loved him?  I guess I wouldn’t!  And that’s why, when I see a man of another sort that you won’t have to break your own heart over, whether you marry him or not, payin’ attention to you, I am glad.  It’s a different thing, marriage with a man like Robert Lloyd, and a man like that would never think of me.  I’m right in the ranks, and you ain’t.”

“I am,” said Ellen, stoutly.

“No, you ain’t; you don’t belong there, and when I see a chance for you to get out where you belong—­”

“I don’t intend to make marriage a stepping-stone,” said Ellen.  “Sometimes—­” She hesitated.

“What?” asked the other girl.

“Sometimes I think I would rather not go to college, after all.”

“Ellen Brewster, are you crazy?  Of course, you will go to college unless you marry Robert Lloyd.  Perhaps he won’t want to wait.”  Then Abby, dauntless as she was, shrank a little before Ellen’s wrathful retort.

“Abby Atkins, you ought to be ashamed of yourself!” she cried.  “There he’s been to see me just twice, the first time on an errand, and the next with his aunt, and he’s walked home with me once because he couldn’t help it; his aunt told him to!”