“Yes, I understand that now,” replied Ellen, blushing; “and I understand, too, that you cannot come to see me very often under such circumstances without making talk.”

“How often?” Robert asked, impetuously.

Ellen hesitated, her lip quivered a little, but her voice was firm.  “Not oftener than two or three times a year, I am afraid,” said she.

“Great Scott!” cried Robert.  Then he caught her in his arms again.  “Do you suppose I can stand that?” he whispered.  “Ellen, I cannot consent to this!”

“It is the only way,” said she.  She freed herself from him enough to look into his eyes with a brave, fearless gaze of comradeship, which somehow seemed to make her dearer than anything else.

“But to see you to speak to only two or three times a year!” groaned Robert.  “You are cruel, Ellen.  You don’t know how I love you.”

“There isn’t any other way,” said Ellen.  Then she looked up into his face with a brave innocence of confession like a child.  “It hurts me, too,” said she.

Robert had her in his arms, and was covering her face with kisses.  “You darling,” he whispered.  “It shall not be long.  Something will happen.  We cannot live so.  We will let it go so a little while, but something will turn up.  I shall have a more responsible place and a larger salary, then—­”

“Do you think I will let you?” asked Ellen, with a great blush.

“I will, whether you will let me or not,” cried Robert; and at that moment he felt inclined to marry the entire Brewster family rather than give up this girl.

However, as he went home, walking that he might think the better, he had to confess to himself that the girl was right; that, as matters were, anything definite was out of the question.  He had to admit that it might be a matter of years.

Chapter XL

When Ellen had been at work in the factory a year, she was running a machine and working by the piece, and earning on an average eighteen dollars a week.  Of course that was an unusual advance for a girl, but Ellen was herself unusual.  She came to work in those days with such swiftness and unswerving accuracy that she seemed fairly a part of the great system of labor itself.  While she was at her machine, her very individuality seemed lost; she became an integral part of a system.

“She’s one of the best hands we ever had,” Flynn told Norman Lloyd one day.

“I am glad to hear that,” Lloyd responded, smiling with that peculiar smile of his which was like a cold flash of steel.

“Curse him, he thinks no more of anybody in this shop than he does of the machine they work,” Flynn thought as he watched the proprietor walking with his stately descent down the stairs.  The noon whistle was blowing, and the younger Lloyd went leaping down the stairs and joined his uncle, then the two walked down the street, away from the factory.  The factory at that time of year began to present, in spite of its crude architecture, quite a charming appearance, from the luxuriant vines which covered it and were beginning to get autumnal tints of red and russet.  All the front of Lloyd’s was covered with vines, which had grown with amazing swiftness.  Mrs. Lloyd often used to look at them and reflect upon them with complacency.