They were now in the midst of a great, hurrying procession bound for the factories.  Some of the men walked silently, with a dogged stoop of shoulders and shambling hitch of hips; some of the women moved droopingly, with an indescribable effect of hanging back from the leading of some imperious hand of fate.  Many of them, both men and women, walked alertly and chattered like a flock of sparrows.  Ellen moved with this rank and file of the army of labor, and all at once a sense of comradeship seized her.  She began to feel humanity as she had never felt it before.  The sense of her own littleness aroused her to a power of comprehension of the grandeur of the mass of which she was a part.  She began to lose herself and sense humanity.

When the people reached the factories, two on one side of the road, one, Lloyd’s, on the other, they began streaming up the outside stairs and disappearing like swarms of bees in hives.  Two flights of stairs, one on each side, led to a platform in front of the entrance of Lloyd’s.

When Ellen set her foot on one of these stairs the seven-o’clock steam-whistle blew, and a mighty thrill shot through the vast building.  Ellen caught her breath.  Abby came close to her.

“Don’t get scared,” said she, with ungracious tenderness; “there’s nothing to be scared at.”

Ellen laughed.  “I’m not scared,” said she.  Then they entered the factory, humming with machinery, and a sensation which she had not anticipated was over her.  Scared she was not; she was fairly exultant.  All at once she entered a vast room in which eager men were already at the machines with frantic zeal, as if they were driving labor herself.  When she felt the vibration of the floor under her feet, when she saw people spring to their stations of toil, as if springing to guns in a battle, she realized the might and grandeur of it all.  Suddenly it seemed to her that the greatest thing in the whole world was work and that this was one of the greatest forms of work—­to cover the feet of progress of the travellers of the earth from the cradle to the grave.  She saw that these great factories, and the strength of this army of the sons and daughters of toil, made possible the advance of civilization itself, which cannot go barefoot.  She realized all at once and forever the dignity of labor, this girl of the people, with a brain which enabled her to overlook the heads of the rank and file of which she herself formed a part.  She never again, whatever her regret might have been for another life for which she was better fitted, which her taste preferred, had any sense of ignominy in this.  She never again felt that she was too good for her labor, for labor had revealed itself to her like a goddess behind a sordid veil.  Abby and Maria looked at her wonderingly.  No other girl had ever entered Lloyd’s with such a look on her face.

“Are you sick?” whispered Abby, catching her arm.

“No,” said Ellen.  “No, don’t worry me, Abby.  I think I shall like it.”