“I have not looked at a paper since she came.”
“Of course you have not. You were afraid to. Why, good God! Cynthia Lennox, I don't know but you will stand in danger of lynching if people ever find this out, that you have taken in this child and kept her in this way—I don't know what people will do.”
Ellen waited for no more; she rose softly, she gathered up her great doll which sat in a little chair near by, she gathered up her pink-and-gold cup which had been given her, and the pinks which had been brought from the hot-house the day before, which Cynthia had arranged in a vase beside her plate, then she stole very softly out of the side door, and out of the house, and ran down the street as fast as her little feet could carry her.
Chapter V
That morning, after the street in front of Lloyd's factory had been cleared of the flocking employés with their little dinner-boxes, and the great broadside of the front windows had been set with faces of the workers, a distracted figure came past. A young fellow at a window of the cutting-room noticed her first. “Look at that, Jim Tenny,” said he, with a shove of an elbow towards his next neighbor.
“Get out, will ye?” growled Jim Tenny, but he looked.
Then three girls from the stitching-room came crowding up behind with furtively tender pressings of round arms against the shoulders of the young men. “We come in here to see if that was Eva Loud,” said one, a sharp-faced, alert girl, not pretty, but a favorite among the male employés, to the constant wonder of the other girls.
“Yes, it's her fast enough,” rejoined another, a sweet-faced blonde with an exaggeratedly fashionable coiffure and a noticeable smartness in the tie of her neck-ribbon and the set of her cotton waist. “Just look at the poor thing's hair. Only see how frowsly it is, and she has come out without her hat.”
“Well, I don't wonder,” said the third girl, who was elderly and whose complexion was tanned and weather-beaten almost to the color of the leather upon which she worked. Yet through this seamed and discolored face, with thin grayish hair drawn back tightly from the temples, one could discern, as through a transparent mask, a past prettiness and an exceeding gentleness and faithfulness. “If my sister's little Helen was to be lost I shouldn't know whether my hat was on or not,” said she. “I believe I should go raving mad.”
“You wouldn't have to slave as you have done supportin' it ever since your sister's husband died,” said the pretty girl. “Only look how Eva's waist bags in the back and she 'ain't got any belt on. I wouldn't come out lookin' so.”