Fate was not so partial that she kept Mr. Goldstein forever in ignorance of this offense against all the laws of contract between employer and employee. He found before the end of the week Ellen's book under the counter; he heard with irritation the amused comments of his friends. If he had caught her in the beginning of her duplicity he would merely have admonished her, but he realized that she had got the better of him for almost a week--not an easy matter, he proudly boasted. He dismissed her with eloquence.
"Did you think I couldn't get no other girls that you could try to make such a fool of me, say? Did you think I run a university? The men on the street say to me, 'Say, is it true that you employ a reader to sit in your window all the time and read a book?' They ask me do you read to me while I work and if it is the Scripture. You can go, and there is your pay."
"Did you think waiting on everybody who came in was what I had you for?" inquired Mr. Goldstein with scorn. "I do the waiting."
"What did you engage me for?" she asked, bewildered.
Mr. Goldstein believed that she was as innocent as she seemed.
"Nobody will come in here to see an old man, will they? I engaged you because you had black eyes."
Ellen's black eyes were for a moment not visible. Then she put on her hat and took the docked wages held out to her. She was not at first insulted, she was only humiliated. But on the way up the dreary hill her sense of outrage grew. Her eyes filled with tears; she longed for her room and for a chance to cry. She felt homeless, and forlorn. She had been driven from her own home and she had no other.
Then in Mrs. Lebber's dismal little hall she stood still. In the parlor sat the last person whom she wished to see at this moment--Matthew, with her satchel beside him.
Matthew had undertaken a large stint of ploughing on the Monday when Ellen went away. The field in which he worked lay on the same ridge as the woodland and commanded a wide stretch of fertile land and commodious barns and houses and beautiful groups of trees. The soil was rich and soft and turned easily, and the two horses knew their business so well and needed so little attention that there was time for many pleasant thoughts.