thither, whom he was meeting: Ben Torry, with a
basket, and his two boys beside him; August Muir, carrying his little
girl and a basket, and his wife following with a basket. Ebenezer spoke
to them, and after he had passed them he thought about them for a
minute.

"Quite little families," he thought. "I s'pose they get along.... I
wonder how much Bruce is making a week?"

Nellie Hatch and her lame sister were watching at the lighted window, as
if there were something to see.

"Must be kind of dreary work for them--living," he thought, "... I
s'pose Bruce is pretty pleased ... pretty pleased."

At the corner, some one spoke to him with a note of pleasure in his
voice. It was his bookkeeper, with his wife and two partly grown
daughters. Ebenezer thought of his last meeting with his bookkeeper, and
remembered the man's smile of perfect comprehension and sympathy, as if
they two had something in common.

"Family life does cling to a man," he had said.

That was his wife on his arm, and their two daughters. On that salary of
his.... Was it possible, it occurred to Ebenezer, that she was saving
egg money, earning sewing money, winning prizes for puzzles--as Letty
had done?

Outside the factory, the blue arc light threw a thousand shadows on the
great bulk of the building, but left naked in light the little office.
He stood looking at it, as he so rarely saw it, from part way across the
road. Seen so, it took on another aspect, as if it had emerged from some
costuming given it by the years. The office was painted brown, and
discoloured. He saw it white, with lozenge panes unbroken, flowered
curtains at the windows, the light of lamp and wood stove shining out.
And as sharply as if it had been painted on the air, he saw some
unimportant incident in his life there--a four-wheel carriage drawn up
at the door with some Christmas guests just arriving, and himself and
Letty and Malcolm in the open doorway. He could not remember who the
guests were, or whether he had been glad to see them, and he had no wish
in the world to see those guests again. But the simple, casual, homely
incident became to him the sign of all that makes up everyday life, the
everyday life of folk--_of folks_--from which he had so long been
absent.

His eye went down the dark little street where were the houses of the
men who were his factory "hands." Just for a breath he saw them as they
were,--the chorus to the thing he was thinking about. They were