“Ten per cent.”
There was a dead silence. Andrew and Fanny looked at Ellen like people who are uncertain of their next move; Amabel stared from one to the other with her weak, watery eyes. Ellen continued to lace her shoes.
“What do you think about it, Ellen?” asked Andrew, almost timidly.
“I know of only one thing to think,” replied Ellen, in a dogged voice.
As she spoke she pulled the tag off a shoe-string because it would not go through the eyelet.
“What is that?” asked Fanny, in a hard voice.
“I think it is cruelty and tyranny,” said Ellen, pulling the rough end of the string through the eyelet.
“I suppose the times are pretty hard,” ventured Andrew; but Ellen cut him short.
“Robert Lloyd has half a million, which has been accumulated by the labor of poor men in prosperous times,” said she, with her childlike severity and pitilessness. “There is no question about the matter.”
Then Fanny flung all self-interest to the wind and was at her daughter's side like a whirlwind. The fact that the two were of one blood was never so strongly evident. Red spots glowed in the elder woman's cheeks and her black eyes blazed.