“But here he is again to-night,” said Abby, apologetically.

“What of that?  I suppose he has come on another errand.”

“Then what made you run away?”

“Because you have all made me ashamed of my life to look at him,” said Ellen, hotly.

Then down went her head on the bed again, and Abby was leaning over her, caressing her, whispering fond things to her like a lover.

“There, there, Ellen,” she whispered.  “Don’t be mad, don’t feel bad.  I didn’t mean any harm.  You are such a beauty—­there’s nobody like you in the world—­that everybody thinks that any man who sees you must want you.”

“Robert Lloyd doesn’t, and if he did I wouldn’t have him,” sobbed Ellen.

“You sha’n’t if you don’t want him,” said Abby, consolingly.

After a while the two girls bathed their eyes with cold water, and went down-stairs into the sitting-room.  Maria was making herself a blue muslin dress, and her mother was hemming the ruffles.  There was a cheap blue shade on the lamp, and Maria herself was clad in a blue gingham.  All the blue color and the shade on the lamp gave a curious pallor and unreality to the homely room and the two women.  Mrs. Atkins’s hair was strained back from her hollow temples, which had noble outlines.

“I’m going to walk a little way with Ellen, she’s going home,” said Abby.

“Very well,” said her mother.  Maria looked wistfully at them as they went out.  She went on sewing on her blue muslin, rather sadly.  She coughed a little.

“Why don’t you put up your sewing for to-night and go to bed, child?” said her mother.

“I might as well sit here and sew as go to bed and lie there.  I shouldn’t sleep,” replied Maria, with the gentlest sadness conceivable.  There was in it no shadow of complaining.  Of late years all the fire of resistance had seemed to die out in the girl.  She was unfailingly sweet, but nerveless.  Often when she raised a hand it seemed as if she could not even let it fall, as if it must remain poised by some curious inertia.  Still, she went to the shop every day and did her work faithfully.  She pasted linings in shoes, and her slender little fingers used to fly as if they were driven by some more subtle machine than any in the factory.  Often Maria felt vaguely as if she were in the grasp of some mighty machine worked by a mighty operator; she felt, as she pasted the linings, as if she herself were also a part of some monstrous scheme of work under greater hands than hers, and there was never any getting back of it.  And always with it all there was that ceaseless, helpless, bewildered longing for something, she was afraid to think what, which often saps the strength and life of a young girl.  Maria had never had a lover in her life; she had not even good comrades among young men, as her sister had.  No man at that time would have ever looked twice at her, unless he had fallen in love with her, and had