"That's so," rejoined Ellen. She looked curiously like her mother that night, and spoke like her. In her heart she echoed the sarcasm to the full. She despised those men for sitting hour after hour in a store, or in the house of some congenial spirit, or standing on a street corner, and talking--talking, she was sure, to no purpose. As for herself, she had done what she thought right; she had, as it were, cut short the thread of her happiness of life for the sake of something undefined and rather vague, and yet as mighty in its demands for her allegiance as God. And it was done, and there was no use in talking about it. She had her wrappers to make. However, she told herself, extenuatingly, "Men can't sew, so they can't work evenings. They are better off talking here than they would be in the billiard-saloon." Ellen, at that time of her life, had a slight, unacknowledged feeling of superiority over men of her own class. She regarded them very much as she regarded children, with a sort of tolerant good-will and contempt. Now, suddenly, she raised her head and listened. "That isn't another man, it's a woman--it's Abby," she said to her mother. "She wouldn't come out in all this rain," replied Fanny. As she spoke, a great, wind-driven wash of it came over the windows. "Yes, it is," said Ellen, and she jumped up and opened the dining-room door. Abby had entered, as was her custom, without knocking. She had left her dripping umbrella in the entry, and her old hat was flattened on to her head with wet, and several damp locks of her hair straggled from under it and clung to her thin cheeks. She still held up her wet skirts around her, as she had held them out-of-doors, but she was gesticulating violently with her other hand. She was repeating what she had said before. Ellen had heard her indistinctly through the door. "Yes, I mean just what I say," she cried. "Get up and go to work, if you are men! Stop hanging around stores and corners, and talking about the tyranny of the rich, and go to work, and make them pay you something for it, anyhow. This has been kept up long enough. Get up and go to work, if you don't want those belonging to you to starve." Abby caught sight of Ellen, pale and breathless, in the door, with her mother looking over her shoulder, and she addressed her with renewed violence. "Come here, Ellen," she said, "and put yourself on my side. We've got to give in." "You go away," cried little Amabel, in a shrill voice, looking around Ellen's arm; but nobody paid any attention to her. "I never will," returned Ellen, with a great flash, but her voice trembled. "You've got to," said Abby. "I tell you there's no other way." "I'll die before I give up," cried Lee, in a loud, threatening voice. "I'm with ye," said Tom Peel. Dixon and the young laster who sat beside him looked at each other, but said nothing. Dixon wrinkled his forehead over his pipe.