Sargent hesitated, with a glance at Fanny.  “I don’t know; I hope not,” said he.  “Lee and Dixon are opposed to giving in, and they are talking hard to-night in the store.  Then some of the men have joined the union since the strike, and of course they swear by it, because it has been helping them, and they won’t approve of giving up.  But I doubt if there will be much trouble.  I guess the majority want to go to work, even the union men.  The amount of it is, it has been such a tough winter it has taken the spirit out of the poor souls.”  Sargent, evidently, in yielding was resisting himself.

“You don’t think there will be any danger?” Fanny said, anxiously, looking at Ellen.

“Oh no, there’s no danger for the girls, anyhow.  I guess there’s enough men to look out for them.  There’s no need for you to worry, Mrs. Brewster.”

“Mr. Lloyd did not offer to do anything better about the wages?” asked Ellen.

Sargent shook his head.

“Catch him!” said Abby, bitterly.

Ellen had a feeling as if she were smiting in the face that image of Robert which always dwelt in her heart.

“Well,” said Abby, with a mirthless laugh, “there’s one thing:  according to the Scriptures, it is as hard for the rich man to get into heaven as it is for the poor men to get into their factories.”

“You don’t suppose there will be any danger?” Fanny said again, anxiously.

“Danger—­no; who’s afraid of Amos Lee and a few like him?” cried Abby, contemptuously; “and Nahum Beals is safe.  He’s going to be tried next month, they say, but they’ll make it imprisonment for life, because they think he wasn’t in his right mind.  If he was here we might be afraid, but there’s nobody now that will do anything but talk.  I ain’t afraid.  I’m going to march up to the shop to-morrow morning and go to work, and I’d like to see anybody stop me.”

However, before they left, John Sargent spoke aside with Andrew, and told him of a plan for the returning workmen to meet at the corner of a certain street, and go in a body to the factory, and suggested that there might be pickets posted by the union men, and Andrew resolved to go with Ellen.

The next morning the rain had quite ceased, and there was a faint something, rather a reminiscence than a suggestion, of early spring in the air.  People caught themselves looking hard at the elm branches to see if they were acquiring the virile fringe of spring or if their eyes deceived them, and wondered, with respect to the tips of maple and horse-chestnut branches, whether or not they were swollen red and glossy.  Sometimes they sniffed incredulously when a soft gust of south wind seemed laden with fresh blossom fragrance.

“I declare, if I didn’t know better, I should think I smelled apple blossoms,” said Maria.

“Stuff!” returned Abby.  She was marching along with an alert, springy motion of her lean little body.  She was keenly alive to the situation, and scented something besides apple blossoms.  She had tried to induce Maria to remain at home.  “I don’t know but there’ll be trouble, and if there is, you’ll be just in the way,” she told her before they left the house, but not in their parents’ hearing.