“On Joy Street, you said?” said Sadie Peel.

“Yes.  Right opposite the school-house.  Her name is Brackett.”

Then the one-o’clock whistle blew, and everybody, Ellen with the rest, went back to their stations.  Robert Lloyd did not come into the room again that afternoon.  Ellen worked on steadily, and gained swiftness.  Every now and then the foreman came and spoke encouragingly to her.

“Look out, Mamie,” he said to the girl at her side, “or she’ll get ahead of you.”

“I don’t want to get ahead of her,” said Ellen, unexpectedly.

Flynn laughed.  “If you don’t, you ain’t much like the other girls in this shop,” said he, passing on with his urbane, slightly important swing of shoulders.

“Did you mean that?” asked Mamie Brady.

“Yes, I did.  It seems to me you work fast enough for any girl.  A girl isn’t a machine.”

“You’re a queer thing,” said Mamie Brady.  “If I were you, I would just as soon get ahead as not, especially if Ed Flynn was goin’ to come and praise me for it.”

Ellen shrugged her shoulders and tied another knot.

“You’re a queer thing,” said Mamie Brady, while her fingers flew like live wires.

Chapter XXXVI

That night, when Ellen went down the street towards home with the stream of factory operatives, she computed that she must have earned about fifty cents, perhaps not quite that.  She was horribly tired.  Although the work in itself was not laborious, she had been all day under a severe nervous tension.

“You look tired to death, Ellen Brewster,” Abby said, in a half-resentful, half-compassionate tone.  “You can never stand this in the world.”

“I am no more tired than any one would be the first day,” Ellen returned, stoutly, “and I’m going to stand it.”

“You act to me as if you liked it,” said Abby, with an angry switch like a cat.

“I do,” Ellen returned, almost as angrily.  Then she turned to Abby.  “Look here, Abby Atkins, why can’t you treat me half-way decent?” said she.  “You know I’ve got to do it, and I’m making the best of it.  If anybody else treated me the way you are doing, I don’t know what you would do.”

“I would kill them,” said Abby, fiercely; “but it’s different with me.  I’m mad to have you go to work in the shop, and act as if you liked it, because I think so much of you.”  Abby and Ellen were walking side by side, and Maria followed with Sadie Peel.

“Well, I can’t help it if you are mad at me,” said Ellen.  “I’ve had everything to contend against, my father and mother, and my grandmother won’t even speak to me, and now if you—­” Ellen’s voice broke.

Abby caught her arm in a hard grip.

“I ain’t,” said she; “you can depend on me.  You know you can, in spite of everything.  You know why I talk so.  If you’ve set your heart on doing it, I won’t say another word.  I’ll do all I can to help you, and I’d like to hear anybody say a word against you for going to work in the shop, that’s all.”