her bed and
prayed. An exultation half-physical, half-spiritual, filled her.
When she rose, her little, thin face was radiant. She seemed to
measure the shortness of the work and woe of the world as between
her thumb and finger. The joy of the divine filled all her longing.
When Abby came home, who shared her chamber, she felt no jealousy.
She only inquired whether she had gone quite home with Ellen. "Yes,
I did," replied Abby. "I don't think it is safe for her to go past
that lonely place below the Smiths'."

"I'm glad you did," said Maria, with an angelic inflection in her
voice.

"Robert Lloyd came to see Ellen, and she ran away over here, and
wouldn't see him, because they had all been plaguing her about him,"
said Abby. "I wish she wouldn't do so. It would be a splendid thing
for her to marry him, and I know he likes her, and his aunt is going
to send her to college."

"That won't make any difference to Ellen, and everything will be all
right anyway, if only she loved God," said Maria, still with that
rapt, angelic voice.

"Shucks!" said Abby. Then she leaned over her sister, caught her by
her little, thin shoulders and shook her tenderly. "There, I didn't
mean to speak so," said she. "You're awful good, Maria. I'm glad
you've got religion if it's so much comfort to you. I don't mean to
make light of it, but I'm afraid you ain't well. I'm goin' to get
you some more of that tonic to-morrow."

Chapter XXXI

When Ellen reached home that night she found no one there except her
father, who was sitting on the door-step in the north yard. Her
mother had gone to see her aunt Eva as soon as the dressmaker had
left. "Who was that with you?" Andrew asked, as she drew near.

"Abby," replied Ellen.

"So you went over there?"

Ellen sat down on a lower step in front of her father. "Yes," said
she. She half laughed up in his face, like a child who knows she has
been naughty, yet knows she will not be blamed since she can count
so surely on the indulgent love of the would-be blamer.

"Ellen, your mother didn't like it."

"They had said so many things to me about him that I didn't feel as
if I could see him, father," she said.

Andrew put a hand on her head. "I know what you mean," he replied,
"but they didn't mean any harm; they're only looking out for your
best good, Ellen. You can't always have us; it ain't in the course
of nature, you know, Ellen."

There was a tone of inexorable sadness, the sadness