Ellen's black eyes were for a moment not visible. Then she put on her hat and took the docked wages held out to her. She was not at first insulted, she was only humiliated. But on the way up the dreary hill her sense of outrage grew. Her eyes filled with tears; she longed for her room and for a chance to cry. She felt homeless, and forlorn. She had been driven from her own home and she had no other.
Then in Mrs. Lebber's dismal little hall she stood still. In the parlor sat the last person whom she wished to see at this moment—Matthew, with her satchel beside him.
CHAPTER XVIII
A CLOCK RUNS DOWN
Matthew had undertaken a large stint of ploughing on the Monday when Ellen went away. The field in which he worked lay on the same ridge as the woodland and commanded a wide stretch of fertile land and commodious barns and houses and beautiful groups of trees. The soil was rich and soft and turned easily, and the two horses knew their business so well and needed so little attention that there was time for many pleasant thoughts.
But his thoughts were not pleasant. Millie's remark to Ellen had offended him; she had behaved like her rude sisters whom he detested. He would admonish her gently and persuade her to apologize; she would be glad, he was sure, to put herself in the right.
Presently he began to meditate upon his experience at State College, to reconstruct the lectures of which he remembered every principle if not every word, to follow again the laboratory experiments. He had not yet recalled his father's reminder that even if one became a farmer science might be useful. He liked to think of the young men whom he had met from various parts of the State, all at work to improve the soil, though it was probable that he would have taken no such pleasure in similar aspirations on the part of his immediate neighbors.
As he turned his horses in the lee of the wood he remembered uneasily how Ellen had always come to him in the troubles of her childhood. Sometimes she had cried noisily so that he was ashamed of her—she had never gone silently away as she did last night.
Amos, as well as Ellen, Matthew thought, had a ground of offense against Millie. He believed that Amos liked to be thought immune to love and did not wish to have even friendly relations with any woman. He thought with faint contempt of a man so young who chose a life of school-teaching and preaching when he might grasp the handles of a plough on a cool and pleasant morning. He would have no sympathy with Grandfather's desire for a return to the ancient conventual establishment. His own plans for the future included a very different improvement of the church property; he foresaw the ultimate collapse or the enforced removal of the old buildings and the erection of a small bright meeting-house with Amos as preacher. But no matter what the future might bring, there could be nothing between Amos and Ellen. The idea was odious.