"I'm not afraid of it. I'm not going to stay here always. I mean to get a place in a store, and I shall study in the evenings, until I've saved enough to go to college."
"Are you then still trying to be learned, Ellen?"
"I'm going to college," said Ellen stubbornly. "I thought perhaps I could get a room where you lived."
"Here?" said Mrs. Sassaman. Alas, by her desire to live on Hill Street Ellen descended from the pedestal upon which the Levises should have remained exalted! "I could ask my sister."
Mrs. Sassaman retired into a quarter nearer the source of the steam and the odor, and returning brought with her a mournful replica of herself. Mrs. Lebber had been the wife of a railroad conductor and had remained after his sudden death in the house to which he had brought her as a bride. She had insurance and death benefits sufficient to support her body and she had a grievance against the railroad company upon which she fed her soul. Life had cruelly disappointed her. Like Mrs. Sassaman she had expected to get married and to remain married and to be a clinging vine. She looked at Ellen with curiosity and disappointment.
"Is this then Ellen!" The sentence was not interrogatory but exclamatory. It said, "This the beautiful scion of a prosperous and famous family of whom I have had to hear so much!"
She sat down heavily.
"She would like if she could get a room here," exclaimed Mrs. Sassaman.
Mrs. Lebber stared in astonishment at Ellen. Mrs. Sassaman had shown no sisterly frankness in her recent accounts of the Levis family, but now their fallen state was plain. Mrs. Lebber had a harmless but inordinate curiosity.
"Why does she leave her nice home?" The question implied a doubt about the niceness of the home.