Robert never spoke to Ellen in the factory, and had never called upon her since she entered. Now and then he met her on the street and raised his hat, that was all. Still, he began to wonder more and more if his aunt had not been mistaken in her view of the girl's motive for giving up college and going to work. Then, later on, he learned from Lyman Risley that a small mortgage had been put on the Brewster house some time before. In fact, Andrew, not knowing to whom to go, and remembering his kindness when Ellen was a child, had applied to him for advice concerning it. “He had to do it to keep his wife's sister in the asylum,” he told Robert; “and that poor girl went to work because she was forced into it, not because she preferred it, you may be sure of that.”
The two men were walking down the street one wind-swept day in December, when the pavement showed ridges of dust as from a mighty broom, and travellers walked bending before it with backward-flying garments.
“You may be right,” said Robert; “still, as Aunt Cynthia says, so many girls have that idea of earning money instead of going to school.”
“I know the pitiful need of money has tainted many poor girls with a monstrous and morbid overvalue of it,” said Risley, “and for that I cannot see they are to blame; but in this case I am sure it was not so. That poor child gave up Vassar College and went to work because she was fairly forced into it by circumstances. The aunt's husband ran away with another woman, and left her destitute, so that the support of her and her child came upon the Brewsters; and Brewster has been out of work a long time now, I know. He told me so. That mortgage had to be raised, and the girl had to go to work; there was no other way out of it.”
“Why didn't she tell Aunt Cynthia so?” asked Robert.
“Because she is Ellen Brewster, the outgrowth of the child who would not—” Risley checked himself abruptly.
“I know,” said Robert, shortly.
The other man started. “How long have you known—she did not tell?”
Robert laughed a little. “Oh no,” he replied. “Nobody told. I went there to call, and saw my own old doll sitting in a little chair in a corner of the parlor. She did not tell, but she knew that I knew. That child was a trump.”
“Well, what can you expect of a girl who was a child like that?” said Risley. “Mind you, in a way I don't like it. This power for secretiveness and this rigidity of pride in a girl of that age strike me rather unpleasantly. Of course she was too proud to tell Cynthia the true reason, and very likely thought they would blame her father, or Cynthia might feel that she was in a measure hinting to her to do more.”