ere's no use in trying to drive a child, when it
comes of our family. She's got some notion in her head, and you've
got to leave her alone to get over it. She's got back safe and
sound, and that's the main thing."

"I wish I knew where she got those things," Fanny said. Looseness of
principle as to property rights was not as strange to her
imagination as to that of her mother-in-law.

For a long time afterwards she passed consciously and uneasily by
cups and saucers in stores, and would not look their way lest she
should see the counterpart of Ellen's, which was Sevres, and worth
more than the whole counterful, had she only known it, and she
hurried past the florists who displayed pinks in their windows. The
doll was evidently not new, and she had not the same anxiety with
regard to that.

No one was allowed to ask Ellen further questions that day, not even
the reporters, who went away quite baffled by this infantile
pertinacity in silence, and were forced to draw upon their
imaginations, with results varying from realistic horrors to Alice
in Wonderland. Ellen was kissed and cuddled by some women and young
girls, but not many were allowed to see her. The doctor had been
called in after her fainting-fit, and pronounced it as his opinion
that she was a very nervous child, and had been under a severe
strain, and he would not answer for the result if she were to be
further excited.

"Let her have her own way: if she wants to talk, let her, and if she
wants to be silent, let her alone. She is as delicate as that cup,"
said the doctor, looking at the shell-like thing which Ellen had
brought home, with some curiosity.

Chapter VIII

That evening Lyman Risley came to see Cynthia. He looked at her
anxiously and scrutinizingly when he entered the room, and did not
respond to her salutation.

"Well, I have seen the child," he said, in a hushed voice, with a
look towards the door as he seated himself before the fire and
spread out his hands towards the blaze. He looked nervous and
chilly.

"How did she look?" asked Cynthia.

"Why in the name of common-sense, Cynthia," he said, abruptly,
without noticing her query, "if you had to give that child china for
a souvenir, didn't you give her something besides Royal Sevres?"
Lyman Risley undoubtedly looked younger than Cynthia, but his manner
even more than his looks gave him the appearance of comparative
youth. There was in it a vehemence and impetuosity almost lik