s,
as if she would withdraw as far as possible from some threatening
ill. At that moment she looked alarmingly like her sister; there was
something about Fanny in her corner, calculated, when all
circumstances were taken into consideration, to make one's blood
chill, but Andrew did not look at her. He was intent upon Ellen, and
the facing of the worst agony of his life, and Ellen was intent upon
him. She loved her mother, but the fear as to her father's suffering
moved her more than her mother's. She was more like her father, and
could better estimate his pain under stress. Andrew rose to his feet
and stood looking at Ellen, and she at him. She tried to meet the
drawn misery and incredulousness of his face with a laugh of
reassurance.

"Yes, I've got a job in Lloyd's," said she. "What's the matter,
father?"

Then Andrew made an almost inarticulate response; it sounded like a
croak in an unknown tongue.

Ellen continued to look at him, and to laugh.

"Now look here, father," said she. "There is no need for you and
mother to feel bad over this. I have thought it all over, and I have
made up my mind. I have got a good high-school education now, and
the four years I should have to spend at Vassar I could do nothing
at all. There is awful need of money here, and not only for us, but
for Aunt Eva and Amabel."

"You sha'n't do it!" Andrew burst out then, in a great shout of
rage. "I'll mortgage the house--that'll last awhile. You sha'n't, I
say! You are my child, and you've got to listen. You sha'n't, I
say!"

"Now, father," responded Ellen's voice, which seemed to have in it a
wonderful tone of firmness against which his agonized vociferousness
broke as against a rock, "this is nonsense. You must not mortgage
the house. The house is all you have got for your and mother's old
age. Do you think I could go to college, and let you give up the
house in order to keep me there? And as for grandma Brewster, you
know what's hers is hers as long as she lives--we don't want to
think of that. I have got this job now, which is only three dollars
a week, but in a year the foreman said I might earn fifteen or
eighteen, if I was quick and smart, and I will be quick and smart.
It is the best thing for us all, father."

"You sha'n't!" shouted Andrew. "I say you sha'n't!"

Suddenly Andrew sank into a chair, his head lopped, he kept moving a
hand before his eyes, as if he were brushing away cobwebs. Then
Fanny came out of her corner