“I don’t know,” replied Abby.  “John Sargent seems to think they’ll give in.  He says he doesn’t know what else they can do.  The times are hard.  I believe Amos Lee and Tom Peel are for striking, but he says he doesn’t believe the men will support them.  The amount of it all is, a man with money has got it all his own way.  It’s like fighting with bare hands to oppose him, and getting yourself cut, and not hurting him at all.  He’s got all the weapons.  We simply can’t go without work all winter.  It is better to do with less than with nothing at all.  What can a man like Willy Jones do if he hasn’t any work?  He and his mother would actually suffer.  What could we do?”

“I don’t think we ought to think so much about that,” said Ellen.

“What do you think we ought to think about, for goodness’ sake?”

“Whether we are doing right or not, whether we are furthering the cause of justice and humanity, or hindering it.  Whether it is for good in the long run or not.  There have always been martyrs; I don’t see why it is any harder for us to be martyrs than for those we read about.”

Sadie Peel came pressing up behind eagerly, her cheeks glowing, holding up her dress, and displaying a cheap red petticoat.  “Ellen Brewster,” she exclaimed, “if you dare say anything more to-day I’m goin’ to talk.  Father is tearing, though he goes around looking as if he wouldn’t jump at a cannon-ball.  Do, for Heaven’s sake, keep still; and if you can’t get what you want, take what you can get.  I ain’t goin’ to be cheated out of my nearseal cape, nohow.”

“Sadie Peel, you make me tired,” cried Abby Atkins.  “I don’t say that I’m striking, but I’d strike for all a nearseal cape.  I’m ashamed of you.”

“I don’t care if you be,” said the girl, tossing her head.  “A nearseal cape means as much to me as some other things to you.  I want Ellen Brewster to hold her tongue.”

“Ellen Brewster will hold her tongue or not, just as she has a mind to,” responded Abby, with a snap.  She did not like Sadie Peel.

“Oh, stick up for her if you want to, and get us all into trouble.”

“I shall stick up for her, you can be mighty sure of that,” declared Abby.

Ellen walked on as if she heard nothing of it at all, with little Maria clinging closely to her.  Robert Lloyd got out of his sleigh and went up-stairs just before they reached the factory, and she heard a very low, subdued mutter of execration.

“They don’t mean to strike,” she told herself.  “They mean to submit.”

All went to their tasks as usual.  In a minute after the whistle blew the great pile was in the full hum of labor.  Ellen stood for a few moments at her machine, then she left it deliberately, and made her way down the long room to where John Sargent stood at his bench cutting shoes, with a swift faithfulness born of long practice.  She pressed close to him, while the men around stared.