ooked almost stupid. Her
elders watched half in delight, half with pain, that they could not
purchase everything at which she looked. Mrs. Zelotes bought some
things surreptitiously, hiding the parcels under her shawl. Andrew,
whispering to a salesman, asked the price of a great cooking-stove
at which Ellen looked long. When he heard the amount he sighed.
Fanny touched his arm comfortingly. "There would be no sense in your
buying that, if you had all the money in creation," she said, in a
hushed voice. "There's a twenty-five-cent one that's good enough.
I'm going to buy that for her to-morrow. She'll never know the
difference." But Andrew Brewster, nevertheless, went through the
great, dazzling shop with his heart full of bitterness. It seemed to
him monstrous and incredible that he had a child as beautiful and
altogether wonderful as that, and could not buy the whole stock for
her if she wanted it. He had never in his whole life wanted anything
for himself that he could not have, enough to give him pain, but he
wanted for his child with a longing that was a passion. Her little
desires seemed to him the most important and sacred needs in the
whole world. He watched her with pity and admiration, and shame at
his own impotence of love to give her all.

But Ellen knew nothing of it. She was radiant. She never thought of
wanting all those treasures further than she already had them. She
gazed at the wonders in that department where the toy animals were
kept, and which resembled a miniature menagerie, the silence broken
by the mooing of cows, the braying of donkeys, the whistle of
canaries, and the roars of mock-lions when their powers were invoked
by the attendants, and her ears drank in that discordant bable of
tiny mimicry like music. There was no spirit of criticism in her.
She was utterly pleased with everything.

When her grandmother held up a toy-horse and said the fore-legs were
too long, Ellen wondered what she meant. To her mind it was more
like a horse than any real one she had ever seen.

As she gazed at the decorations, the wreaths, the gauze, the tinsel,
and paper angels, suspended by invisible wires over the counters,
and all glittering and shining and twinkling with light, a strong
whiff of evergreen fragrance came to her, and the aroma of
fir-balsam, and it was to her the very breath of all the mysterious
joy and hitherto untasted festivity of this earth into which she had
come. She felt deep in her chi