“I should think Mis’ Lloyd would be afraid to ride with such horses,” said Mrs. Zelotes, as they leaped aside in passing; then she bowed and smiled with eager pleasure, and yet with perfect self-respect.  She felt herself every whit as good as Mrs. Norman Lloyd, and her handsome Paisley shawl and velvet bonnet as genteel as the other woman’s sealskins and floating plumes.  Mrs. Lloyd loomed up like a vast figure of richness enveloped in her bulky winter wraps; her face was superb with health and enjoyment and good-humor.  Her cheeks were a deep crimson in the cold wind; she smiled radiantly all the time as if at life itself.  She had no thought of fear behind those prancing bays which seemed so frightful to Mrs. Zelotes, used to the steadiest stable team a few times during the year, and driven with a wary eye to railroad crossings and a sense of one’s mortality in the midst of life strong upon her.  Mrs. Norman Lloyd had never any doubt when her husband held the lines.  She would have smiled behind ostriches and zebras.  To her mind Norman Lloyd was, as it were, impregnable to all combinations of alien strength or circumstances.  When she bowed on passing the Brewsters, she did not move her fixed smile until she caught sight of Ellen.  Then emotion broke through the even radiance of her face.  She moved her head with a flurry of nods; she waved her hand; she even kissed it to her.

“Bow to Mis’ Lloyd, Ellen,” said her grandmother; and Ellen ducked her head solemnly.  She remembered what she had heard the night before, and the sleigh swept by, Mrs. Lloyd’s rosy face smiling back over the black fringe of dancing tails.  Eva had shot a swift glance of utmost rancor at the Lloyds, then sat stiff and upright until they passed.

“I wouldn’t ask Ellen to bow to that woman,” said she, fiercely, between her teeth.  “I hate the whole tribe.”

No one heard her except Andrew, and he shook the lines over the steady stable horse, and said, “G’lang!” hoarsely.

Mrs. Norman Lloyd, in the other sleigh, had turned to her husband with somewhat timid and deprecating enthusiasm.  “Ain’t she a sweet little girl?” said she.

“What little girl?” Lloyd asked, abstractedly.  He had not looked at the Brewsters at all.

“That little Ellen Brewster who ran away and was gone most three days a little while ago.  She was in that sleigh we just passed.  She is just the sweetest child I ever laid eyes on,” and Norman Lloyd smiled vaguely and coldly, and cast a glance over his sable-clad shoulders to see how far behind the team whose approaching bells he heard might be.

“I suppose her father and aunt are out of work on account of the closing of the factory,” remarked Mrs. Lloyd, and a shadow of reflection came over her radiant face.

“Yes, I believe they worked there,” Lloyd replied, shaking loose the reins and speeding the horses, that he might not be overtaken.  In a few minutes they reached the factory neighborhood.  There were three factories:  two of them on opposite sides of the road, humming with labor, and puffing with jets of steam at different points; Lloyd’s, beyond, was as large as both those standing hushed with windows blank in the afternoon sunshine.