. Harris, how well you stood in the high-school, and she
says she is willing to send you to Vassar College."

Ellen turned pale. She looked long at her father, whose pathetic,
worn, half-triumphant, half-pitiful face was so near her own; then
she looked at Cynthia, then back again. "To Vassar College?" she
said.

"Yes, Ellen, to Vassar College, and she offers to clothe you while
you are there, but we thank her, and tell her that ain't necessary.
We can furnish your clothes."

"Yes, we can," said Fanny, in a sobbing voice, but with a flash of
pride.

"Well, what do you say to it, Ellen?" asked Andrew, and he asked it
with the expression of a martyr. At that moment indescribable pain
was the uppermost sensation in his heart, over all his triumph and
gladness for Ellen. First came the anticipated agony of parting with
her for the greater part of four years, then the pain of letting
another do for his daughter what he wished to do himself. No man
would ever look in Ellen's eyes with greater love and greater
shrinking from the pain which might come of love than Andrew at that
moment.

"But--" said Ellen; then she stopped.

"What, Ellen?"

"Can you spare me for so long? Ought I not to be earning money
before that, if you don't have much work?"

"I guess we can spare you as far as all that goes," cried Andrew. "I
guess we can. I guess we don't want you to support us."

"I rather guess we don't," cried Fanny.

Ellen looked at her father a moment longer with an adorable look,
which Robert saw with a sidewise glance of his downcast eyes, then
at her mother. Then she slid from her father's knee and crossed the
room and stood before Cynthia. "I don't know how to thank you
enough," she said, "but I thank you very much, and not only for
myself but for them"; she made a slight, graceful, backward motion
of her shoulder towards her parents. "I will study hard and try to
do you credit," said she. There was something about Ellen's direct,
childlike way of looking at her, and her clear speech, which brought
back to Cynthia the little girl of so many years ago. A warm flush
came over her delicate cheeks; her eyes grew bright with tenderness.

[Illustration: I'll study hard and try to do you credit]

"I have no doubt as to your doing your best, my dear," she said,
"and it gives me great pleasure to do this for you."

With that, said with a graceful softness which was charming, she
made as if to rise, but Ellen still stood