“The times are pretty hard,” said a doubtful voice among her auditors.

“What if the times are hard?  What is that to you?  Have you made them hard?  It is the great capitalists who have made them hard by shifting the wealth too much to one side.  They are the ones who should suffer, not you.  What have you done, except come here morning after morning in cold or heat, rain or shine, and work with all your strength?  They who have precipitated the hard times are the ones who should bear the brunt of them.  Your work is the same now as it was then, the strain on your flesh and blood and muscles is the same, your pay should be the same.”

“That’s so,” said Abby Atkins, in a reluctant, surly fashion.

“That’s so,” said another girl, and another.  Then there was a fusilade of hand-claps started by the girls, and somewhat feebly echoed by the men.

One or two men looked rather uneasily back towards Dennison and Flynn and two more foremen who had come forward.

“It ain’t as though we had something to fall back on,” said a man’s grumbling voice.  “It’s easy to talk when you ’ain’t got a wife and five children dependent on you.”

“That’s so,” said another man, doggedly.

“That has nothing to do with it,” said Ellen, firmly.  “We can all club together, and keep the wolf from the door for those who are hardest pressed for a while; and as for me, if I were a man—­”

She paused a minute.  When she spoke again her voice was full of childlike enthusiasm; it seemed to ring like a song.

“If I were a man,” said she, “I would go out in the street and dig—­I would beg, I would steal—­before I would yield—­I, a free man in a free country—­to tyranny like this!”

There was a great round of applause at that.  Dennison scowled and said something in a low voice to another foreman at his side.  Flynn laughed, with a perplexed, admiring look at Ellen.

“The question is,” said Tom Peel, slouching on the outskirts of the throng, and speaking in an imperturbable, compelling, drawling voice, “whether the free men in the free country are going to kick themselves free, or into tighter places, by kicking.”

“If you have got to stop to count the cost of bravery and standing up for your rights, there would be no bravery in the world,” returned Ellen, with disdain.

“Oh, I am ready to kick,” said Peel, with his mask-like smile.

“So am I,” said Granville Joy, in a loud voice.  Amos Lee came rushing through the crowd to Ellen’s side.  He had been eating his dinner in another room, and had just heard what was going on.  He opened his mouth with a motion as of letting loose a flood of ranting, but somebody interposed.  John Sargent, bulky and irresistible in his steady resolution, put him aside and stood before him.

“Look here,” he said to them all.  “There may be truth in what Miss Brewster says, but we must not act hastily; there is too much at stake.  Let us appoint a committee and go to see Mr. Lloyd this evening, and remonstrate on the cutting of the wages.”  He turned to Ellen in a kindly, half-paternal fashion.  “Don’t you see it would be better?” he said.