“That's so,” said another girl, and another. Then there was a fusilade of hand-claps started by the girls, and somewhat feebly echoed by the men.
One or two men looked rather uneasily back towards Dennison and Flynn and two more foremen who had come forward.
“It ain't as though we had something to fall back on,” said a man's grumbling voice. “It's easy to talk when you 'ain't got a wife and five children dependent on you.”
“That's so,” said another man, doggedly.
“That has nothing to do with it,” said Ellen, firmly. “We can all club together, and keep the wolf from the door for those who are hardest pressed for a while; and as for me, if I were a man—”
She paused a minute. When she spoke again her voice was full of childlike enthusiasm; it seemed to ring like a song.
“If I were a man,” said she, “I would go out in the street and dig—I would beg, I would steal—before I would yield—I, a free man in a free country—to tyranny like this!”
There was a great round of applause at that. Dennison scowled and said something in a low voice to another foreman at his side. Flynn laughed, with a perplexed, admiring look at Ellen.
“The question is,” said Tom Peel, slouching on the outskirts of the throng, and speaking in an imperturbable, compelling, drawling voice, “whether the free men in the free country are going to kick themselves free, or into tighter places, by kicking.”
“If you have got to stop to count the cost of bravery and standing up for your rights, there would be no bravery in the world,” returned Ellen, with disdain.