"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. "I suppose the poor men feel pretty badly at being thrown out of work," Mrs. Lloyd said, looking up at the windows as she slipped past in her nest of furs. "They feel so badly that I have seen a round dozen since we started out taking advantage of their liberty to have a sleigh-ride with livery teams at a good round price," Lloyd replied, with languid emphasis. He never spoke with any force of argument to his wife, nor indeed to any one else, in justification of his actions. His reasons for action were in most cases self-evolved and entirely self-regulated. He had said not a word to any one, not even to his foreman, of his purpose to close the factory until it was quite fixed; he had asked no advice, explained to no one the course of reasoning which led to his doing so. Rowe was a city of strikes, but there had never been a strike at Lloyd's because he had abandoned the situation in every case before the clouds of rebellion were near enough for the storm to break. When Briggs and McGuire, the rival manufacturers at his right and left, had resorted to cut prices when business was dull, as a refuge from closing up, Lloyd closed with no attempt at compromise. "I suppose they need a little recreation," Mrs. Lloyd observed, thinking of the little girl's face peeping out between her mother and grandmother in the sleigh they had just passed. "Their little recreation is on about the same scale for them as my hiring a special railroad train every day in the week to go to Boston would be for me," returned Lloyd, setting his handsome face ahead at the track.