“I heard she was very low last night,” Ellen returned, in a hushed voice.
Then she passed Granville, who stood a second gazing wistfully after her, before he resumed his homeward way. He told himself quite accurately that she had purposely refrained from turning, in order to avoid walking with himself. A certain resentment seized him. It seemed to him that something besides his love had been slighted. “She needn't have thought I was going to make love to her going home in broad daylight with all these folks,” he reflected, and he threw up his head impatiently.
The man with whom he had been walking when Ellen appeared lingered for him to rejoin him. “Wonder how many shops they'd shut up for you and me,” said the man, with a sort of humorous bitterness. He had a broad face, seemingly fixed in an eternal mask of laughter, and yet there were hard lines in it, and a forehead of relentless judgment overhung his wide bow of mouth and his squat and wrinkled nose.
“Guess not many,” replied Granville, echoing the man in a way unusual to him.
“And yet if it wa'n't for us they couldn't keep the shop running at all,” said the man, whose name was Tom Peel.
“That's so,” said Granville, with a slight glance over his shoulder.
Ellen had met the Atkins girls, and had turned, and was coming back with them. It was as he had thought.
“If the new boss cuts down fifteen per cent., as the talk is, what be you goin' to do?” asked Tom Peel.
“I ain't goin' to stand it,” replied Granville, fiercely.
“Ain't goin' to be swept clean by the new broom, hey?” said the man, with a widened grin.