At last it came to pass that the two women met only upon that small neutral ground of love, and upon all other territory were sworn foes.

Especially was Mrs.
Zelotes wroth when Eva Loud, after the death of her father, one of the most worthless and shiftless of the Louds of Loudville, came to live with her married sister.

She spoke openly to Fanny concerning her opinion of another woman's coming to live on poor Andrew, and paid no heed to the assertions that Eva would work and pay her way.
Mrs.Zelotes, although she acknowledged it no social degradation for a man to work in a shoe-factory, regarded a woman who worked therein as having hopelessly forfeited her caste.

Eva Loud had worked in a shop ever since she was fourteen, and had tagged the grimy and leathery procession of Louds, who worked in shoe-factories when they worked at all, in a short skirt with her hair in a strong black pigtail.

There was a kind of bold grace and showy beauty about this Eva Loud which added to Mrs.Zelotes's scorn and dislike.
"She walks off to work in the shop as proud as if she was going to a party," she said, and she fairly trembled with anger when she saw the girl set out with her son in the morning.