y small abstentions: no guests, no diversions, no snatches of song
about her work. Yet she was sane enough, and normal, only in dearth of
sane and normal outlets for emotion, for energy, for personality, she
had taken these strange directions for yet unharnessed forces.

"Mercy," observed Mis' Winslow, warming her hands at the cooking stove,
"you got more energy."

"... than family, I guess you mean," Ellen Bourne finished. Ellen was
little and fair, with slightly drooping head, and eyebrows curved to a
childlike reflectiveness.

"Well, I got consider'ble more family than I got energy," said Mis'
Winslow, "so I guess we even it up. Seven-under-fifteen eats up energy
like so much air."

"Hey, king and country," said Ellen's old father, whittling by the fire,
"you got family enough, Ellen. You got your hands full of us." He rubbed
his hands through his thin upstanding silver hair on his little pink
head, and his fine, pink face took on the look of father which rarely
intruded, now, on his settled look of old man.

"I donno what she'd do," said Ellen's mother, "with any more around here
to pick up after. We're cluttered up enough, as it is." She was an old
lady of whose outlines you took notice before your attention lay further
upon her--angled waist, chin, lips, forehead, put on her a succession of
zigzags. But her eyes were awake, and it was to be seen that she did not
mean what she said and that she was looking anxiously at Ellen in the
hope of having deceived her daughter. Ellen smiled at her brightly, and
was not deceived.

"I keep pretty busy," she said.

Mis' Abby Winslow, who was not deceived either, hastened to the subject
of Mary.

"I should think Mary Chavah had enough to do, too," she said, "but she's
going to take Lily's little boy. Had you heard?"

"No," Ellen said, and stopped shaving silver polish.

"He's coming in two weeks," Mis' Winslow imparted; "she told me so
herself. She's got his room fixed up with owls on the wall paper. She's
bought him a washbasin with a rim of puppies, and a red stocking cap. I
saw her."

"How old is he?" Ellen asked, and worked again.

"I never thought to ask her," Mis' Winslow confessed; "he must be quite
a little fellow. But he's coming alone from some place out West."

"Hey, king and country," Ellen's father said; "I'd hate to have a boy
come here, with my head the way it is."

"And keeping the house all upset," Ellen's mother said, and asked Mis'
Winslow s