"I don't know."
"Are you there alone with him in his store?"
"No; men repair watches in a little room at the back."
Mrs. Lebber shook her head.
"There are very bad people in the city. Most are bad."
Ellen recalled Millie's account of the experiences of her acquaintances who went to the city to find work and who were set upon as though they were lambs venturing into the lairs of wolves. She scorned both Millie's tales and Mrs. Lebber's fears.
She went to her room and unpacked her belongings; then by the dim light she wrote to Matthew asking him to forward her larger satchel. Having wiped away a few angry tears, she opened her algebra and fixed her mind upon it.
When she laid her head on her pillow she felt under her cheek the sharp points of the black dust she had seen on her window-sill and had felt under her hand as she touched the furniture. Sometimes a light shower fell upon her cheek. The trains had thundered in the abyss all the evening, but she had a vague notion that they would now go to bed. Instead their activity increased; they seemed to come in the window and go out the door, to threaten the foundations of the house.
Finding sleep impossible she considered the weapons with which she was to fight her battles. The education which was so superior to that of her country neighbors was, it seemed, unfortunately not correlated with the requirements of department stores. But she had a mind and she would learn. In the second place, she had physical strength. She did not count in the least upon her curly hair, her clear skin, her dark eyes, and her round figure, nor realize that it was these possessions which had won her her first situation.
Having exhausted herself as a subject for study, she thought of Mrs. Sassaman, who had changed. In the light of the old days she decided that Mrs. Sassaman, by turns silent and communicative and frequently on the verge of tears, had "something on her mind."