e modestly recurred to the earlier opinion he had given
her husband that it would be better to spend the rest of the summer in
Holland than to go to Italy, as if she wished to conform herself in the
wisdom of Mr. Kenton's decision. He repeated his conviction, and he said
that if he were in their place he should go to The Hague as soon as they
had seen Rotterdam, and make it their headquarters for the exploration
of the whole country.

"You can't realize how little it is; you can get anywhere in an hour;
the difficulty is to keep inside of Holland when you leave any given
point. I envy you going there."

Mrs. Kenton inferred that he was going to stop in France, but if it were
part of his closeness not to tell, it was part of her pride not to ask.
She relented when he asked if he might get a map of his and prove the
littleness of Holland from it, and in his absence she could not well
avoid saying to Ellen, "He seems very pleasant."

"Yes; why not?" the girl asked.

"I don't know. Lottie is so against him."

"He was very kind when you were all sick."

"Well, you ought to know better than Lottie; you've seen him so much
more." Ellen was silent, and her mother advanced cautiously, "I suppose
he is very cultivated."

"How can I tell? I'm not."

"Why, Ellen, I think you are. Very few girls have read so much."

"Yes, but he wouldn't care if I were cultivated, Ha is like all the
rest. He would like to joke and laugh. Well, I think that is nice, too,
and I wish I could do it. But I never could, and now I can't try. I
suppose he wonders what makes me such a dead weight on you all."

"You know you're not that, Ellen! You musn't let yourself be morbid. It
hurts me to have you say such things."

"Well, I should like to tell him why, and see what he would say."

"Ellen!"

"Why not? If he is a minister he must have thought about all kinds
of things. Do you suppose he ever knew of a girl before who had been
through what I have? Yes, I would like to know what he would really
say."

"I know what he ought to say! If he knew, he would say that no girl had
ever behaved more angelically."

"Do you think he would? Perhaps he would say that if I hadn't been so
proud and silly--Here he comes! Shall we ask him?"

Breckon approached with his map, and her mother gasped, thinking how
terrible such a thing would be if it could be; Ellen smiled brightly up
at him. "Will you take my chair? And then you can show momma your map. I
am