“Well, then, here’s what I wanted to ask you. When I leave it, what’s the matter with your coming with me? I mean it. And I’ll look after you.” The girl’s revolt against her new and odious environment had insensibly carried her back into the free phraseology of her former life. As this was equally familiar to Lucinda’s factory-attuned ear, it could not have been the slang expression at which she halted. But she did stop, and in turn looked sharply into Jessica’s face. Her own cheeks, red with exposure to the biting air, flushed to a deeper tint. “You better ask Samantha, if that’s your game,” she said. “She’s more in your line. I ain’t on that lay myself.” Before Jessica had fairly comprehended the purport of this remark, her sister had started briskly off by herself. The town girl stood bewildered for a moment, with a little inarticulate moan of pained astonishment trembling on her lips. Then she turned and ran after Lucinda. “Wait a minute!” she panted out as she overtook her. “You didn’t understand me. I wouldn’t for a million dollars have you think _that_ of me. Please wait, and let me tell you what I really meant. You’ll break my heart if you don’t!” Thus adjured, Lucinda stopped, and consented to fall in with the other’s slower step. She let it be seen plainly enough that she was a hostile auditor, but still she listened. As Jessica, with a readier tongue than she had found in Reuben Tracy’s presence the day before, outlined her plan, the factory-girl heard her, first with incredulity, then with inter-est, and soon with enthusiasm. “Go with you? You just bet I will!” was the form of her adhesion to the plan, when it had been presented to her. The two young women extended their walk by tacit consent far beyond the original intention, and it was past the hour set for the dinner when they at last reluctantly entered the inhospitable-looking domicile. Its shabby aspect and the meanness of its poverty-stricken belongings had never seemed so apparent before to either of them, as they drew near to it, but it was even less inviting within. They were warned that it would be so by their father, whom they encountered just outside the kitchen door, chopping up an old plank for firewood. Ben had put on a glaringly white paper collar, to mark his sense of the importance of the festival, and the effect seemed to heighten the gloom on his countenance. “There’s the old Harry to pay in there,” he said, nodding his head toward the door. “Melissa’s come in from the farm to spend the day, because she heard you was here, Jess, and somehow she got the idee you’d bring a lot of dresses and fixings, and she wanted her share, and got mad because there wasn’t any; and Samantha she pitched into her about coming to eat up our dinner, and M’rye she took Melissa’s part, and so I kind o’ sashayed out. They don’t need this wood any more’n a frog needs a tail, but I’m going to whack ’er all up.”