“When right is on your side, you have all the odds,” said Ellen, looking back over her snow-powdered shoulder.
“Then you would strike?”
“I wouldn't submit.”
“Well, I don't know how the boys feel,” said Granville. “I suppose we'll have to talk it over.”
“I shouldn't need to talk it over,” said Ellen. “You've gone past your house, Granville.”
“I ain't going to let you go home alone in such a storm as this,” said Granville, in a tender voice, which he tried to make facetious. “I wouldn't let any girl go home alone in such a storm.”
Ellen stopped short. “I don't want you to go home with me, thank you, Granville,” she said. “Your mother will have supper ready, and I can go just as well alone.”
“Ellen, I won't let you go alone,” said the young man, as a wilder gust came. “Suppose you should fall down?”
“Fall down!” repeated Ellen, with a laugh, but her regard of the young man, in spite of her rebuff, was tender. He touched her with his unfailing devotion; the heavy trudging by her side of this poor man meant, she told herself, much more than the invitation of the rich one to ride behind his bays in his luxurious sleigh. This meant the very bone and sinew of love. She held out her little, mittened hand to him.
“Good-night, Granville,” she said.