Chapter XLVI

It was some time after Mrs. Lloyd’s death.  Ellen had not seen Robert except as she had caught from time to time a passing glimpse of him in the factory.  One night she overheard her father and mother talking about him after she had gone to bed, the sitting-room door having been left ajar.

“I thought he’d come and call after his aunt died,” she heard Fanny say.  “I’ve always thought he liked Ellen, an’ here he is now, with all that big factory, an’ plenty of money.”

“Mebbe he will,” replied Andrew, with a voice in which were conflicting emotions, pride and sadness, and a struggle for self-renunciation.

“It would be a splendid thing for her,” said Fanny.

“It would be a splendid thing for him,” returned Andrew, with a flash.

“Land, of course it would!  You needn’t be so smart, Andrew Brewster.  I guess I know what Ellen is, as well as you.  Any man might be proud to get her—­I don’t care who—­whether he’s Robert Lloyd, or who, but that don’t alter what I say.  It would be a splendid chance for Ellen.  Only think of that great Lloyd house, and it must be full of beautiful things—­table linen, and silver, and what-not.  I say it would be a splendid thing for her, and she’d be above want all her life—­that’s something to be considered when we ’ain’t got any more than we have to leave her, and she workin’ the way she is.”

“Yes, that’s so,” assented Andrew, with a heavy sigh, as of one who looks upon life from under the mortification of an incubus of fate.

“We’d ought to think of her best good,” said Fanny, judiciously.  “I’ve been thinkin’ every evening lately that he’d be comin’.  I’ve had the fire in the parlor stove all ready to touch off, an’ I’ve kept dusted in there.  I know he liked her, but mebbe he’s like all the rest of the big-bugs.”

“What do you mean?” asked Andrew, with an inward qualm of repulsion.  He always hated unspeakably to hear his wife say “big-bugs” in that tone.  Although he was far from being without humility, he was republican to the core in his estimate of his own status in his own free country.  In his heart, as long as he kept the law of God and man, he recognized no “big-bugs.”  It was one of the taints of his wife’s ancestry which grated upon him from time to time.

“Oh, well, mebbe he don’t want to be seen callin’ on a shop-girl.”

“Then he’d better keep away, that’s all!” cried Andrew, furiously.

“Oh, well, mebbe it ain’t so,” said Fanny.  “He’s always seemed to me like a sensible feller, and I know he’s liked Ellen, an’ lots of girls that work in shops marry rich.  Look at Annie Graves, married that factory boss over to Pemberton, an’ has everythin’.  She’d worked in his factory years.  Mebbe it ain’t that.”

“Ellen don’t act as if she minded anything about his not comin’,” said Andrew, anxiously.