[The Portion of Labor by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman]@TWC D-Link book
The Portion of Labor

CHAPTER X
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When Ellen woke the next morning she had a curious feeling, as if she were blinded by the glare of many hitherto unsuspected windows opening into the greatness outside the little world, just large enough to contain them, in which she had dwelt all her life with her parents, her aunt, her grandmother, and her doll.

She tried to adjust herself to her old point of view with her simple childish recognition of the most primitive facts as a basis for dreams, but she remembered what Mr.Atkins, who coughed so dreadfully, had said the night before; she remembered what the young man with the bulging forehead, who frightened her terribly, had said; she remembered the gloomy look in her father's face, the misery in her aunt Eva's; and she remembered her doll in the closet--and either everything was different or had a different light upon it.

In reality Ellen's evening in the sound and sight of that current of rebellion against the odds of life which has taken the poor off their foot hold of understanding since the beginning of the world had aged her.

She had lost something out of her childhood.

She dreaded to go down-stairs; she had a feeling of shamefacedness struggling within her; she was afraid that her father and mother would look at her sharply, then look again, and ask her what the matter was, and she would not know what to say.


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