ed curiosity.

"Lloyd's has shut down, if you want to know," Andrew said, shortly.

"Oh my God!" cried Eva. Andrew shrank from her impatiently. She made
that ejaculation because she was a Loud, and had an off-streak in
her blood. Not one of Andrew's pure New England stock would have so
expressed herself. He sat down beside the lamp and took up the
evening paper. Eva stood looking at him a minute. She was quite
pale, she was weighing consequences. Then she went out to her
sister. "Well, you know what's happened, Fan, I s'pose," she said.

"Yes, I'm awful sorry, but I tell Andrew it ain't so bad for us as
for some; we sha'n't starve."

"I don't know as I care much whether I starve or not," said Eva.
"It's goin' to make me put off my weddin'; and if I do put it off,
Jim and me will never get married at all; I feel it in my bones."

"Why, what should you have to put it off for?" asked Fanny.

"Why? I should think you'd know why without askin'. Ain't I spent
every dollar I have saved up on my weddin' fixin's, and Jim, he's
got his mother on his hands, and she's been sick, and he ain't saved
up anything. If you s'pose I'm goin' to marry him and make him any
worse off than he is now you're mistaken."

"Well, mebbe Jim can work somewhere else, and mebbe Lloyd's won't be
shut up long," Fanny said, consolingly. "I wouldn't give up so, if I
was you."

"I might jest as well," Eva returned. "It's no use, Jim and me will
never get married." Eva's face was curiously set; she was not in
the least loud nor violent as was usually the case when she was in
trouble, her voice was quite low, and she spoke slowly.

Fanny looked anxiously at her. "It ain't as though you hadn't a roof
to cover you," she said, "for you've got mine and Andrew's as long
as we have one ourselves."

"Do you think I'd live on Andrew long?" demanded Eva.

"You won't have to. Jim will get work in a week or two, and you'll
get married. Don't act so. I declare, I'm ashamed of you, Eva Loud.
I thought you had more sense, to give up discouraged at no more than
this. I don't see why you jump way ahead into trouble before you get
to it."

"I've got to it, and I can feel the steam of it in my face," Eva
said, with unconscious imagery. Then she lit a lamp, and went
up-stairs to change her dress before Jim Tenny arrived.

It was snowing hard. Ellen sat in her place by the window and
watched the flakes drive past the radiance of the street-lamp on the
corner, a