“You had better go if Mr. Lloyd will take you,” Abby said, decisively.  “Thank you, Mr. Lloyd; she isn’t fit to be out.”  She urged her sister towards the sleigh, and Robert assisted her into the fur-lined nest.

“I can sit with the driver,” said Robert to Abby, “if you will come with your sister.”

“No, thank you,” replied Abby.  “I am able to walk, but I will be much obliged if you will take Maria home.”

Robert sprang in beside Maria, and the sleigh slid out of sight.

“I never!” said Abby.  Ellen said nothing, but plodded on, her eyes fixed on the snowy track.

“I am glad she had a chance to ride,” said Granville Joy, in a tentative voice.  He looked uneasily at Ellen.

“It beats the Dutch,” said Abby.  She also regarded Ellen with sympathy and perplexity.  When they reached the street where she lived, up which the sleigh had disappeared, she let Granville go on ahead, and she spoke to Ellen in a low tone.  “Why didn’t he ask you?” she said.

“He did,” replied Ellen.

“In the office?”

“Yes.”

“And you wouldn’t?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t care to accept favors from a man who oppresses all my friends!”

“He was good to take in Maria,” said Abby, in a perplexed voice.  “His uncle would never have thought of it.”

Ellen made no reply.  She stood still in the drifting snow, with her mouth shut hard.

“You feel as if this cutting wages was a pretty hard thing?” said Abby.

“Yes, I do.”

“Well, so do I. I wonder what they will do about it.  I don’t know how the men feel.  Somehow, folks can’t seem to think or plan much in a storm like this.  There’s the sleigh coming back.”

“Good-night,” Ellen said, hurriedly, and trudged on as fast as she was able in order not to have the Lloyd sleigh pass her; it had to turn after reaching the end of the street.  Ellen caught up with Granville Joy.  Robert, glancing over the waving fringe of fur tails, saw disappearing in the pale gleam of the electric-light the two dim figures veiled by the drifting snow.  He thought to himself, with a sharp pain, that perhaps, after all, Granville Joy was the reason for her rebuff.  It never occurred to him that his action in cutting the wages could have anything to do with it.

Ellen went along with Granville, who was anxious to offer her his arm, but did not quite dare.  He kept thrusting out an elbow in her direction, and an inarticulate invitation died in his throat.  Finally, when they reached an unusually high drift of snow, he plucked up sufficient courage.

“Take my arm, won’t you?” he said, with a pitiful attempt at ease, then stared as if he had been shot, at Ellen’s reply.

“No, thank you,” she said.  “I think it is easier to walk alone in snow like this.”

“Maybe it is,” assented Granville, dejectedly.  He walked on, scuffling as hard as he could to make a path for Ellen with the patient faithfulness of a dog.