“Oh, stick up for her if you want to, and get us all into trouble.”
“I shall stick up for her, you can be mighty sure of that,” declared Abby.
Ellen walked on as if she heard nothing of it at all, with little Maria clinging closely to her. Robert Lloyd got out of his sleigh and went up-stairs just before they reached the factory, and she heard a very low, subdued mutter of execration.
“They don't mean to strike,” she told herself. “They mean to submit.”
All went to their tasks as usual. In a minute after the whistle blew the great pile was in the full hum of labor. Ellen stood for a few moments at her machine, then she left it deliberately, and made her way down the long room to where John Sargent stood at his bench cutting shoes, with a swift faithfulness born of long practice. She pressed close to him, while the men around stared.
“What is going to be done?” she asked, in a low voice.
Sargent turned and looked at her in a troubled fashion, and spoke in a pacific, soothing tone, as her father might have done. He was much older than Ellen.
“Now look here, child,” he said, “I don't dare take the responsibility of urging all these men into starvation this kind of weather. The times are hard. Lloyd has some reason—”
Ellen walked away from him swiftly and went to the row of lasting-machines where Amos Lee and Tom Peel stood. She walked up to them and spoke in a loud, clear voice.
“You are not going to give in?” said she. “You don't mean to give in?”