darling," said the woman, but she might
as well have importuned a flower. Ellen was proof against all
commands in that direction. She suddenly felt the furry sweep of the
lady's cloak against her cheek, and a nervous, tender arm drawing
her close, though she strove feebly to resist. "You are cold, you
have nothing on but this little white shawl, and perhaps you are
hungry. What were you looking in this window for? Tell me, dear,
where is your mother? She did not send you on an errand, such a
little girl as you are, so late on such a cold night, with no more
on than this?"

A tone of indignation crept into the lady's voice.

"No, mother didn't send me," Ellen said, speaking for the first
time.

"Then did you run away, dear?" Ellen was silent. "Oh, if you did,
darling, you must tell me where you live, what your father's name
is, and I will take you home. Tell me, dear. If it is far, I will
get a carriage, and you shall ride home. Tell me, dear."

There was an utmost sweetness of maternal persuasion in Cynthia
Lennox's voice; Ellen was swayed by it as a child might have been
swayed by the magic pipe of the Pied Piper of Hamelin. She half
yielded to her leading motion, then she remembered. "No," she cried
out, with a sob of utter desolation. "No, no."

"Why not, dear?"

"They don't want; they don't want. No, no!"

"They don't want you? Your own father and mother don't want you?
Darling, what is the matter?" But Ellen was dumb again. She stood
sobbing, with a painful restraint, and pulling futilely from the
lady's persuasive hand. But it ended in the mastery of the child.
Suddenly Cynthia Lennox gathered her up in her arms under her great
fur-lined cloak, and carried her a little farther down the street,
then across it to a dwelling-house, one of the very few which had
withstood the march of business blocks on this crowded main street
of the provincial city. A few people looked curiously at the lady
carrying such a heavy, weeping child, but she met no one whom she
knew, and the others looked indifferently away after a second
backward stare. Cynthia Lennox was one to bear herself with such
dignity over all jolts of circumstances that she might almost
convince others of her own exemption from them. Her mental bearing
disproved the evidence of the senses, and she could have committed a
crime with such consummate self-poise and grace as to have held a
crowd in abeyance with utter distrust of their own eyes before suc