taring from one to the other.

"Nothing that you need worry about," said Ellen. "I'll tell you when
I get my dress changed."

Ellen pulled off her rubbers, and went up-stairs to her chamber.
Fanny and Andrew stood looking at each other.

"You don't suppose--" whispered Andrew.

"Suppose what?" responded Fanny, sharply.

They continued to look at each other. Fanny answered Andrew as if he
had spoken, with that jealous pride for her girl's self-respect
which possessed her even before the girl's father.

"Land, it ain't that," said she. "You wouldn't catch Ellen lookin'
as if anything had come across her for such a thing as that."

"No, I suppose she wouldn't," said Andrew; and he actually blushed
before his wife's eyes.

That afternoon Mrs. Wetherhed had been in, and told Fanny that she
had heard that Robert Lloyd was to be married to Maud Hemingway; and
both Andrew and Fanny had thought of that as the cause of Ellen's
changed face.

"You'd better take that broom out into the shed, and get the snow
off yourself, and come in and shut the door," Fanny said, shortly.
"You're colding the house all off, and Amabel has got a cold, and
she's sitting right in the draught."

"All right," replied Andrew, meekly, though Fanny had herself been
holding the sitting-room door open. In those days Andrew felt below
his moral stature as head of the house. Actually, looking at Fanny,
who was earning her small share towards the daily bread, she seemed
to him much taller than he, though she was a head shorter. He
thought so little of himself, he seemed to see himself as through
the wrong end of a telescope. Fanny went into the sitting-room and
shut the door with a bang. Amabel did not look up from her book. She
was reading a library book much beyond her years, and sniffing
pathetically with her cold. Amabel had begun to discover an
omnivorous taste for books, which stuck at nothing. She understood
not more than half of what she read, but seemed to relish it like
indigestible food.

When Ellen came down-stairs, and sat beside the coal stove to change
her shoes, she looked at the book which Amabel was reading. "You
ought not to read that book, dear," she said. "Let Ellen get you a
better one for a little girl to-morrow."

But Amabel, without paying the slightest heed to Ellen's words,
looked up at her with amazement, as Andrew and Fanny had done.
"What's the matter, Ellen?" she asked, in her little, hoarse voice.

Fanny and An