The Story of a Child

I.

“MY own opinion is.”said Mrs. Dale, “that he heard they were coming to Old Chester again, and he felt that his presence would be an embarrassment to her, and so went away. Very properly, I ’m sure; it show’s very nice feeling in a person like Mr. Tommy. ”

“Well, perhaps so.”Mrs. Wright agreed; “but I don’t know why he should shut up his little house, and go away, dear knows where, just because she is to he in Old Chester for the summer. Suppose he was foolish when she was here before; I don’t know but what it shows a little conceit on Mr. — on his part, to think that his presence makes any difference to Jane — I mean to her.” Mrs. Wright corrected herself nervously, glancing at the little figure curled up on the steps of the porch.

Mrs. Dale raised a cautioning finger. “Children do understand things in the most astonishing way, ” she said in a low voice.

“Oh. yes,” Mrs. Wright said quickly. " I did n’t mean to mention names,

I ’m sure. But it is so awkward to have the apothecary shop shut up, and have to go to Willie King’s for one’s medicines, all because Jane Temple — Oh, dear me!” ended Mrs. Wright blankly.

“She did n’t hear you,”Mrs. Dale assured her; “it ’s almost her bedtime, and she will go in, in a few minutes. But do be careful, dear Susy.

Mrs. Wright, who despite her fortyfive years was still in the bubbling inconsequence of youth, said nervously, “Oh, my gracious, yes! I didn’t mean to. Only, the Temples have n’t been in Old Chester for four years, and I ’m sure that is time enough for him to have forgotten that he was ever so foolish as to think of — of her,”said Mrs. Wright, swallowing the name; “and I ’m sure she never encouraged him.”

“Of course not,” Mrs. Dale agreed. “They are talking about Mr. Henry Temple’s sister, ” the child on the steps reflected; “and they are talking about Mr. Tommy Dove going away and leaving his house all shut up. They have to talk about those things because they are grown up.”

In her heart she pitied them, but not too deeply to disturb the joy of that delicious melancholy that a child feels in the summer twilight. She put her head down on her arm and looked up into the branches of the locust-trees, standing, sentinel-like, on either side of the porch. She followed with her eyes the curious outlines of the gnarled and twisted limbs as they were drawn against the violet of the evening sky. She knew those outlines well; they met and crossed in a way that suggested the arm and clenched hand of an airy giant, imprisoned by the growing branches. She had, long ago, fashioned a story to suit the tree picture. She said to herself that when her grandfather died this hand was stretched out to rob her of her grandmother, too, but that the wrinkled branches of the friendly trees had caught it and held the giant fast; when the wind blew she could hear him whispering and complaining, but the faithful trees still kept him a prisoner, so that he could do no harm. The thought that he might ever escape made her shudder; it occurred to her that it would he wise to do something to keep the trees friendly; perhaps water them every evening?

Such plans led her far away from the talk of the grown people. She did not hear Mrs. Wright say that if only “he had heen in a different walk of life she would have heen glad enough to have had “her” marry him. “Her life in her brother’s family can’t be very happy,” said Mrs. Wright; “her sister-in-law is such a wretched invalid that she, poor dear, has to give herself up to the housekeeping and to those two children. She ought to have a home of her own. Of course she would be lonely. but an unmarried woman must expect to be lonely.” Mrs. Wright said this with as much severity as a plump woman can ; she tried to have Christian charity for every one, but, being happily married herself, she found it hard to excuse Jane Temple’s single life.

“Yes, " Mrs. Dale admitted briefly, and then added, “but it is better to be lonely than to wish to he alone. If she had married a man so different from herself, she might have come to that.”

The child, sensitive to the change in her grandmother’s voice, looked up, and her little forehead gathered in anxious wrinkles; she thought she would like to take Mrs, Dale’s hand and kiss it, and say, “Don’t be sorry! ” She listened for some comment from Mrs.

Wright, but none came. How still they were, these two, sitting in the darkness! The full skirt of her grandmother’s silk dress looked as though it were carved out of black marble, and above it glimmered whitely the old solemn face that she loved and feared; Mrs. Wright’s comfortable form seemed to melt into mystery; and suddenly, as she looked at the two motionless figures, all the intangible dumb terrors of childhood began to rise in her throat. Oh, if they would only speak; if she could hear some other sound than the high faint stir of the leaves above her, and far away, below the terrace, the prolonged note of a cicada !

“Suppose,” she said to herself, her eyes widening with fright, — “suppose that all of a sudden grandmother’s head ang Mrs. Wright’s head were to roll off, and roll down the steps, right here, beside me! Her breath caught in a sob of terror. The vision of the rolling beads frightened her to the last point ot endurance; she could not trust her voice to say good-night, but darted down the steps, and ran, her knees trembling under her. along the path to the back of the house. She knew that the servants would be in the kitchen: yawning, very likely, over the good books Mrs. Dale provided for their edification, or rocking and sewing in stolid comfort, but alive — speaking! In her rush along the dewy path, the child had a ghastly thought of a dead world, herself the only living thing in it; but this was followed by the instant reflection that, under those circumstances, she might walk into the queen’s palace and put on a crown; this thought was so calming that when she reached the women she had no desire to throw herself into Betsey’s arms, as she had planned to do, declaring that she would he a good girl forever afterwards. This promise had seemed to Ellen necessary as a bribe to Something; but, her passionate fright over, the impulse faded, and she was content to pin Betsey’s shawl around her waist, and walk up and down the kitchen with a queenly tread, absorbed in visions of future if solitary greatness.

The two ladies upon the porch were rather relieved by her flight, though Mrs. Wright checked her kindly gossip long enough to say, “Why, what is the matter with Ellen ?”

“She has gone to tell Betsey to put her to bed. I suppose,”Mrs. Dale said.

“ Dear me, Susy, she is a great care.

I wish she were like your Lydia, quiet and well behaved. 1 often think I ‘m too old to train a child; and she is very like her mother. Poor Lucy was not brought up according to our ideas, you know.”

“ She reminds me of Dr. Dale, sometimes,” said Mrs. Wright, who was conspicuous in Old Chester for always saying the wrong thing.

Mrs. Dale’s face hardened. " I only wish she may grow to be like my dear husband in — in amiability. ”

“Oh, dear me, yes! ” cried Mrs. Wright, with an exuberance that betrayed her. “Dear Dr. Dale! ”

Mrs. Dale bowed her head.

The thoughts of both these women were on Dr. Eben Dale, — one with honest pity, the other with the scorch of mortification and anger. He was dead, the brilliant, weak old man, — dead, and escaped from his wife’s fierce rectitude. In their youth she had harassed him with the passionate spur of exacting love, but later that had been exchanged for contempt. And then he died. No one guessed her grief, covered as it was by bitterness, and yet no one knew her fear of that joyous and imaginative temperament which had made it easy for him to go wrong, and which she saw repeated in her grandchild.

When Mrs. Wright said that little Ellen was like her grandfather, Mrs. Dale’s heart contracted: she lost her interest in Jane Temple’s affairs; she began to examine her conscience as to whether she was doing her duty to the child. It seemed to her that her husband was looking at her from Ellen’s eyes,— looking and laughing, as though he and she took up the old quarrel again.

“Like her grandfather! ” Mrs. Dale’s thin old hands clasped each other in a tremulous grip. “Oh — no — no! ” she said to herself. “Oh, if my Heavenly Father will only give me grace to train her for Him! ”

II.

Old Chester is a hundred years behind the times; so, at least, it is assured by its sons and daughters who have left it to live in the great world, but who come back, sometimes, for condescending visits to old homes. The town lies among the rolling hills of western Pennsylvania, — hills which have never echoed with the scream of the locomotive, but are folded in a beautiful green silence, broken only by the silken ripple of little streams which run across the meadows or through the dappled shadows of the woods.

There is not much variety in Old Chester. The houses are built in very much the same way: broad porches; square rooms on either side of a wide hall that runs from the front door to the back ; open fireplaces like black caverns under tall wooden mantelpieces. In all the gardens the flower-beds are surrounded by stiff box hedges, and all the orchards are laid out in straight lines.

The people are as much alike as their houses: they read the same books, go to the same church, train their children by the same rules, and are equally polite, reserved, and gently critical of one another.

Perhaps the most striking thing about the village is the way in which the children are brought up. In Old Chester young persons are supposed to be seen, and not heard ; they are taught that when they have the privilege of being in the company of their elders and betters it is to profit by example and be grateful for advice. Thus they early perceive that their opinions are of no importance, — a perception which adds greatly to the comfort of grown persons.

In spite of this admirable system, there has been more than one black sheep in the village. There was Eben Dale himself, although his youth dated so very far back that perhaps his maturity should not be quoted against Old Chester. Henry Temple, too, had not turned out well, except in a worldly way; and the worldly way was of small importance in Old Chester. Indeed, without quite putting it into words, the village felt a little lack of gentility in Henry’s undoubted wealth; and that, added to his change in politics, and his indifference to church matters, and his willingness to live in the great world instead of the village, was enough to make Old Chester say that he had “not turned out well.” “Such a pity that his father was so lenient with him! ” people said, and waited calmly for some Nemesis to overtake him ; it being a peculiarity of Old Chester to believe that an overruling Providence agreed with it in questions of desert.

There had been one instance of overseverity in the village, but only one, and that not among the families of importance. This was in the case of Mr. Tommy Dove, the apothecary. His mother had ruled him with an iron rod until his forty-seventh year; then death pushed her from her throne, and left Mr. Tommy free, except indeed for the restraint of tenderness, which death, kindly but untrue, left in her place. Yet be soon rallied into self-reliance, — “remarkably soon,” Old Chester commented disapprovingly; for within three months after her death he took advantage of his liberty to go gadding about the world, leaving his patrons to get their medicines where they might. Dates were remembered chronologically in the village. “Dr. Dale gave up practice the winter that the first Mrs. Drayton died; ” “Henry Temple voted the wrong ticket the year there was a snowstorm when the apple-trees were in bloom;” and “Mr. Tommy’s first ill-regulated action in mysteriously leaving town took place the summer that Henry Temple and his family were here,”

Mr. Tommy was hardly important enough to gossip about, but Mr. Temple was; and, incidentally, his children were discussed, for spoiling Richard and Euphemia was another of his sins. Not even his sister’s efforts to train them could make up for his shocking carelessness, people said. That Miss Jane did her best was plain enough; but Miss Jane was gentle and timid and self-distrustful, as every unmarried woman should be, and the children, unfortunately, were like their father, headstrong and self-satisfied. So how could she discipline them?

Beside, the summer of the Temples’ first visit. —the summer Mr. Tommy had disappeared,—Miss Jane had a small happiness and interest of her own, which no doubt claimed the thought that might have been given to Effie and Dick. It was not a very exciting happiness; only a pleasant talk now and then with Mr. Dove, or an occasional call from him in those fragrant summer evenings. They would sit alone, these two elderly persons, in the dimly lighted drawing-room, hearing a murmur of talk in the library across the hall, or starting with a fright which neither of them understood if a door opened and closed, or if Mr. Henry Temple’s voice were heard in the hall. Mr. Dove had dared to give Miss Temple a bunch of flowers, once; and once, too, had embarrassed and touched her by bringing her a little green crape shawl which had belonged to his mother. It was all very harmless and very pleasant; when, suddenly. Old Chester learned with astonishment that its apothecary had gone! Of course the reason could not long be concealed: Mr, Tommy, the village declared, aghast and disapproving, but grateful for a bit of gossip. —

Mr. Tommy had made love to Jane Temple!

But that was four years ago, and Mr. Tommy, who returned as soon as the Temples left the village, had behaved so properly ever since that his presumption was not remembered against him, until now. when they were coming back again, a second abrupt and mysterious departure brought it all to mind.

“So foolish in Mr. Tommy, every one said severely, and looked at Jane Temple to see how she took it. Miss Temple took it calmly. There was a quick, surprised glance at the closed house standing in its neglected garden. and a little heightened color in her cheek when she went to Willie King’s to have one of Mrs. Temple’s prescriptions filled. Perhaps she was too busy for any embarrassment, or regret, or wonder: her sister-in-law’s health was an absorbing anxiety; Effie’s lessons had to be looked after: Dick needed her to keep his fishing-lines in order; Mr. Temple was so good as to let her be of use in his literary work to the extent of copying manuscript for him. Beside, there was a certain occupation in the mere delight of beinghack again in her old home, among old friends. This quiet, old-fashioned living, which afforded Mr. Henry Temple much diversion, was dear and sacred to her. There was nothing droll to her ears in being called a “girl;” it gave her a pathetic happiness to have Mrs. Dale apologize for speaking of a delicate subject in her presence. “I forgot you were here, my dear,”Mrs. Dale said ; and Miss Jane blushed, properly and prettily, and felt comforted and cared for. She knew more of the great, indifferent, vulgar world than Mrs. Dale ever dreamed of, but she cast down her eyes unaffectedly when the older woman apologized for speaking of the misconduct, of a village girl. She wished she might draw Dick and Effie into this tranquil life which so refreshed her. She looked at these two young persons, and pitied them because they did not know Youth. Here, in Old Chester, how carefully Youth was guarded! It was still protected and considered when maturity had set its mark about soft lips and gentle eyes, it was done by snubbing. Henry Temple said, but Miss Jane never felt snubbed ; she saw only kindly protection in the condescension which so amused her brother, and her elderly starved heart basked in it with great content. She was so modest, so grateful, that her friends were pleased to say of her that Jane had no “airs.”This most satisfying praise could not be given to the rest of the Temple household; the two children were especially “airy,”and “snubbing ” became a matter of duty to all thoughtful persons. “That unfortunate Temple child,” Old Chester said, in speaking of Effie, “must really be reproved. " The reproof was only the rebuke of a grave manner and a discreet indifference to what she said and did, but it astounded and irritated the child. To hear herself addressed, on the rare occasions when she was noticed. as Euphemia instead of Effie — for Old Chester did not approve of nicknames — filled her with childish rage.

“My name’s Effie; I don’t like to be called Euphemia. ” she always retorted glibly; and she gave her opinion of Old Chester, in this connection, with great freedom and force to Ellen Dale. " How queer and old-fashioned everybody is here, ” she said, “and how funny to be called Ellen; it’s such an ugly name! Why don’t you make your grandmother call you Nellie ?”

“Make ” her grandmother! Ellen, who was really a year older than the fine young lady who addressed her, shivered; yet there was no Old Chester child so quickly influenced by Effie Temple as she.

All the children had received Effie with admiration, and even a little fright. Ellen and her dearest friend, Lydia Wright, talked about her in lowered voices. They felt vaguely that there was something naughty in thinking too much of the strange little girl, whose hair hung over her eyes and waved loosely about her shoulders, who possessed two rings, and who never wore aprons. One morning, soon after Effie’s arrival in Old Chester, Ellen whispered to Lydia behind her spelling-book, at school, that if she would come down to the fence of the east pasture that afternoon she would be there, — “and tell you something about her, ” she ended mysteriously.

Lydia opened her round eyes very wide and shook her brown curls. “May be my mother won’t allow me to go down to the east pasture, Ellen.”

“But if you just happened to be walking there,” Ellen tempted, “an’ I happened to be walking on my side of the fence? It is n’t like visiting; I guess we need n’t ask leave.”

“Well,”said Lydia doubtfully.

If you should be there, and you should bring your sewing. I ’d do it for you.”Ellen enticed; “only, of course, may be I won’t be there.”

“Well. ’ said Lydia again, but with more firmness.

Mother did n’t say I must n’t,” she assured herself, when, in the afternoon, silencing her conscience with casuistry learned from her friend, she ran across a sunny meadow, through an orchard, waist-deep in blossoming grass, and reached the east pasture. Two poplars, one on either side of the fence, dropped flickering shadows through the sunshine, and their smooth trunks offered comfortable supports to any one who climbed up and sat on the fence, as Ellen was doing now.

“Why ! " said she, affecting vast astonishment. “Where are you going? Won’t you stop a minute and talk? ”

“ Why, Ellen. ” faltered the other, “you said ” —

“I happened to be walking along here, Ellen interrupted, frowning, — it was so stupid in Lydia to forget to make believe, " I saw you coming, and I waited a little while. It isn’t visiting, ”

“Oh, no,”Lydia assented weakly. “I — I brought the handkerchief to hem, Ellen. You said you would,” she ended, with a confused air.

“Oh, I don’t mind doing a little for you,” Ellen returned, in an obliging manner; she ignored the arrangement, but she did not ignore the work.

Lydia reached the handkerchief up to her. and then climbed on the fence and settled herself comfortably against her poplar. Ellen whipped a thimble out of her pocket and began to sew very fast. “She’s coming to our school until it closes, and when it does she is to have a governess.”

“Oh! " cried Lydia. There was no need to say who was coming. To the two children Effie Temple was the only person of importance in Old Chester.

“She does n’t want to,” proceeded Ellen. ” I heard grandmother tell Mrs. Drayton so. Grandmother said it showed how she was brought up, that anybody knew or cared what she wanted. Grandmother said she was spoiled! ”

“Oh, my! ”

“But she ’s coming, any way. And, Lydia, do you know, she talks French ! ” Lydia was speechless. “They ’re coming to tea to our house to-morrow night, and she ’s coming. And grandmother said I might have my tea-set on the bench on the side porch. — just Effie and me. I wish grandmother would invite you.”

“Won’t she?” Lydia asked anxiously.

“No, " Ellen assured her, sighing. I guess I ‘ll go home now and fix my tea-set for to-morrow night. I wonder if she ’ll like to play hollyhock ladies, or hear stories? Do you suppose she ’ll like stories? I ’ll tell her lots. I ‘11 tell her what happened to me when I was a little girl and was sick.”

Lydia knew this story well, but she could not resist asking for it again, and listening, with delightful shudders, while Ellen cheerfully, her hands clasped around her knees, staring up into the branches above her, related, circumstantially, and with that pride in illness which children feel, how she had taken lots of medicine, and got worse, and worse, and worse, and worse ; and then at last they thought she was dead, and she was put into a coffin and buried, — here she paused to quake with terror, not at her bold untruth, but at the picture she had conjured up; and how she had “escaped,”— and thus, and thus. Neither child believed this marvelous tale, but it was true to both. Midway in her fiction Ellen stopped to say, “Oh, Lydia, do you know any French at all ? ”

It was not often that Lydia occupied. the proud position of instructor to Ellen, so it was a happy moment when she said: “Yes, I do; I know ‘How do you do, this morning? ’ My brother told me.”

“Oh, tell me,” Ellen begged; and Lydia generously said something which sounded like “Coma-voo port ah voo, set mattan? ” Her pleasure at giving Ellen information almost made her forget the vague and gnawing consciousness that she had done wrong in coming out without permission.

III.

That tea party was an event in Ellen’s life. To begin with, she had a quarrel with Betsey Thomas, who was dressing her.

“ I don’t want to wear a white apron ; it’s too babyish. I won’t! So there !

“You will,” Betsey assured her briefly, holding out the hated garment.

Ellen stamped and opened her lips for some outcry, but there was a sound in the hall outside the door, and she only drew a sobbing breath and waited; she knew that slow rustle of her grandmother’s dress. As for Betsey, she hailed it with delight.

“If you please, ma’am,” she said, as Mrs, Dale entered, “Ellen won’t put on her apron,”

“Grandmother, I don’t see why I should wear an apron. I’m going on twelve, and Effie does n’t have to, and ” —

“That is enough, Ellen.”

Mrs. Dale’s hair, soft and white as spun silk, was caught back by little tortoise-shell combs, and fell in three short, thick curls on either side of her face; she wore a turban made of snowy muslin, and the bosom of her black satin gown was filled with the same soft whiteness, crossed in smooth folds and fastened with a small pin in a silver setting. Her delicate old hands Were covered with rings, most of them with strands of hair beneath dull glass. She looked at her little granddaughter critically. “Tie her hair back with a brown ribbon, Betsey Thomas,”she said, and Ellen involuntarily put up her hands to protect the pink band which held her straight brown locks smoothly in place. Ellen wore her hair, as did all Old Chester little girls, parted in the middle and cut short behind her ears. It was so thick that it made her head look like a mop.

Even Betsey regretted the order about the pink ribbon. “She wants,”the maid explained afterwards to the cook, “to make that child just as oldfashioned as if she was fifty, I do declare! And that little Effie all dressed up, and banged, and all that! There! I did pity our Ellen. ”

Ellen pitied herself, but submitted to the brown ribbon with only a quiver of her little red upper lip. She gave a despairing glance in the long glass, and saw a small, sturdy figure in a green frock. — a frock reaching nearly to her ankles, and made very simply, with only a frill in the neck and sleeves for trimming; she saw the white dimity apron, its tabs pinned up on each shoulder; then, rosy cheeks, big troubled eyes, and the brown ribbon tying back the straight silken brown hair. That straight dark hair was Ellen’s greatest cross. Many, many times she had added to her prayers the petition that it might grow light and curly, or that she might own a frizzled yellow wig; and she had painfully eaten many crusts of bread, having been told by some deceitful disciplinarian that to eat crusts would make her hair curl. Perhaps she would have been happier had she known that Mrs. Dale, watching that glance into the mirror, was saying to herself, “How much better my little Ellen looks than that furbelowed Temple child! ” But Mrs. Dale would never have told Ellen that she looked nicely, lest the knowledge should make her vain.

When Ellen saw the “Temple child. ” with her yellow hair and her white dress and blue Sash, she had a moment, of that, intense anger which only childhood knows. She grew white,and her grandmother, perceiving the change of color, said to herself that she was glad to see the child show a little shyness. Generally Ellen was too modest to be shy, though Mrs. Dale did not make that distinction in her thoughts. As for Effie, she was neither modest nor shy.

“Oh, how do you do?” she said, and took Ellen’s limp hand in hers with the most matter-of-fact and grown-up politeness. Then Mrs. Temple spoke kindly to Ellen, and murmured something about her dear dead mother; and Miss Jane kissed her, and said she hoped she would come to see Effie often.

“If grandmother will allow me,” Ellen answered, her anger ebbing as she spoke.

“Now, Ellen.” observed Mrs. Dale, “take your little friend to the side porch. Have you put out your tea things? Euphemia, you and Ellen are to take tea on the side porch.”

Ellen was quite joyous by this time, and took her guest’s hand with smiling haste. Effie looked blank. “Are we to go away ? ”

“Oh, we are going to have a good time ; we’re going to have tea all by ourselves. Come, we must set the table! ”

There was a bubble of happiness in Ellen s voice. She had forgotten the brown ribbon, and the plain frock, and her wrath. One could not be angry when one could drink tea on the side porch, where the jasmine was blooming on the lattice, and where one had one’s own china dishes, and small cakes baked to fit them.

Effie stared at her, “ Does your grandma make you set the table? How horrid ! We have servants. I thought your grandma was rich ? ”

“Rich ?" said Ellen. “I don’t know. Don’t you think it ’s fun to put out your own china? It’s mine, you know. See! isn’t that teapot pretty ? ”

Effie admitted that it was; but she looked at it with a bored irritation.

How queer not to go to supper with the grown people! ” she said.

The table on Which Ellen spread her cloth was really only a wide bench at one end of the porch. It was so low that the children sat on hassocks instead of chairs. Through the long hall, from the front porch, they could hear the voices of the company; but here all was quiet, save for their own chatter.

“ Let ’s get some roses for the table, " Effie suggested, beginning to be interested.

“Oli. yes!” cried Ellen, and then hesitated. “But I did n’t ask grandmother. ”

“ Do you have to ask ? Why, I should just tell the gardener to get me bushels, if I wanted them.”

“Would you? ” said Ellen wistfully. “I have to ask.”

“Well, I think that’s perfectly dreadful! ” Effie sympathized, emphasizing her words in a way that was quite now to the other child. Indeed, many things were new to Ellen. By the time the little feast was over she had learned much that she had never suspected. She was told that Betsey ought to call her “Miss Ellen or Miss Nellie; Ellen is awful. I ’m going to call you Nellie, or Nettie: how would you like Nettie? Ellen is dreadful!” She was assured that she looked awfully queer with her hair parted and cut so short, and with no bang: and also that it was funny to wear an apron. —although, indeed, she knew that, she said. And then she confided the story of the afternoon.

“I would n’t stand it! " cried Elfie. “I would n’t let anybody rule me that way! I’d —why, my goodness,

I think your grandmother is awfully cruel. ”

Ellen gasped.

“You poor little thing.”Effie went on, “it’s perfectly shameful, the way they treat you. Well, never mind,

I ‘ll take care of you; only you must have some spirit. Watch me, and I ’ll show you how to act. Here, Betsey ! give Miss Nellie some more cake. ”

Betsey was “that dumfounded.”as she told the cook afterwards, that she “did n’t hardly know what to say;” what she did say, looking severely at Ellen, was, “ Eat your pudding, and don’t talk,” which Ellen scarcely deserved, being speechless with astonishment. She was thinking to herself. “What will Lydia say when I tell her about it at recess to-morrow ?" But she helped Effie to the pudding, and suggested that they should make believe that the little mounds of rice on their plates were mountains, and the brown, soft raisins hidden in them were the bodies of travelers buried in the snow, and they themselves were noble St. Bernard dogs, searching, at terrible risk, to save imperiled lives. To do this made the simple dessert delicious to Ellen, who, in eating each frozen traveler as soon as he was found, was not disturbed by any sense of incongruity. But she had so far profited by Effie’s example that when Betsey reproved her for leaving some rice upon her plate, with the remark that it was wicked waste, and that some poor child would like to have it. she had the courage to retort that she did n’t see what good it would do the poor child if she ate the rice.

“So there! ” Effie added, to encourage her.

“And from that minute, Betsey Thomas used to say, “I took a dislike to that young one! ”

Effie’s indignation at her hostess’s hard lot was very impressive to Ellen; Lydia had never seemed to be so sorry for her, she thought. But although it was interesting to talk about herself, she felt that politeness demanded that she should entertain her guest, and so, when tea was over, she reluctantly interrupted Effie’s sympathy to ask her if she would like to play martyrs.

“Martyrs?” said Effie, with an unflattering readiness to change the subject. “What is it? I don’t know; yes. is it forfeits, or anything like that? I like forfeits, but I don’t want to play any old improving game.”

“It is n’t a game.” Ellen explained ; “it’s just — martyrs. Lydia and I play it. Come down in the garden and we ’ll make them. Do you think you could be a martyr, Effie? ”

“Well, you are the queerest girl! " was all Effie vouchsafed to say.

The two children ran across the lawn and down between the box-edged borders to a group of hollyhocks, standing like slender spires against the yellow sunset. Ellen’s face was grave and eager as she chose the bowers she wanted, but Effie was not certain whether to be contemptuous or interested.

A splendid crimson blossom was the first one to be picked. “ That is the mother of the family,”said Ellen, explaining. A pale rose came next. “That’s the eldest daughter. This white one is a bride, and she has consumption; and this little yellow one is a little girl, like me.”

“Martyrs! ” said Effie, with unaffected contempt. “ I never heard of anything so silly.”

“You wait, ” Ellen answered mysteriously. She sat down on the grass, and, carefully pulling off the furry calyx of each gorgeous blossom, she bent the silken petals back with careful touches, and then, plucking long blades of grass, tied what she called “sashes ” about the waists of her floral dolls ; after that, a stalk of grass was thrust through each of these high - shouldered ladies, and there were their arms stretched out at right angles. The feathery pistils made stately head-dresses for the four little persons who were to die for a principle.

Then the children went back to the house, and pushed four matches down into the mossy line between the flagstones of the path, and tied a martyr to each little stake, heaping bits of twigs as fagots about their devoted forms. By that time Effie was as absorbed as Ellen. Ellen told the “story ” of the play, but, as Effie was company, she applied the fire, — the “torch,” Ellen called it. “And they said, ‘If you will recant, ’ ” Ellen recited, the bride’s silvery white robe shivering at the touch of the flame, — " ‘if you will recant, you shall have all the money you want, and a palace to live in.’ But the lovely lady shook her head, and said, ‘I won’t, and so they burned her up.” Ellen’s lip quivered as she reached this point in the story. The fresh flowers did not burn well, and their prolonged suffering made her so unhappy that, suddenly, she scattered the tiny brands and rescued them.

“Oh, my!” she said, “I’m glad I did n’t live in Bloody Mary’s time.

I would n’t have liked to he burned. I know it’s wicked, but I would n’t. I tried it, to see if I could, and — I could n’t,” she ended in a shamed voice.

“How did you try? ”

“Well, I put my hand in the candle, like Cranmer.”

“Well?”

“I — I took it out again. Oh, I hope there won’t be any more persecutions. I get so scared thinking about it I ”

“You ’re the funniest girl! ” Effie declared.

Ellen was silent. It seemed to her that she had been very silly to cry because she had not been able to keep her blistering finger in the candle flame. After a while, she said in a low voice, " Did you ever read Persecutions in Spain? There’s a lot about martyrs in it. It scares me.”

“What do you read it for, then? ” Effie inquired, not unnaturally; but she could not help being interested when Ellen told her of beautiful nuns walled up alive in dreadful dungeons, and she was constrained to say she would read it some day.

“It would be nice to play walling up, ” Ellen said meditatively. “ We have a brick oven round by the kitchen door; we could crawl in and pretend to be walled up ? ”

Effie was enchanted with the thought, and the two children hurried, in the fading light, to the old oven. It had a turtle-like back, and stood on three squat brick legs. Bread had been baked in it that day, and it was still faintly warm, and the smell of fresh bread mingled deliciously with the pungent scent of wood smoke. There were traces of ashes about its cavernous mouth, and Ellen pushed in the fire-rake and drew out some charred brands.

Effie had no suggestions to make, but she assented eagerly to all Ellen’s plans.

“They used to leave some food for the nuns, when they buried ’em alive,” said Ellen, “so we must put in a loaf of bread and a ewer—it always said in the book a ‘ewer’ — of water. But who will wall us up? That wooden square is the door, and Betsey puts this rake - handle against it to keep it up when the bread is in. But we can t do that when we get inside? ”

“Oh, I ’ll do it,.” Effie said: “you get inside, and I ‘11 do it.

This seemed very unselfish on Effie’s part. Ellen hesitated, but the temptation was too great, and she crawled into the open month of the oven. Then Effie propped the door in place with the rake-handle, and the martyr, curling herself up to fit the small space, folded her hands upon her breast and composed herself for an ecstasy. “I ’ll sing a hymn,” she called out in a muffied voice, — “the martyrs always sing hymns. But I think I ‘11 eat my bread first.” She crammed some bread into her mouth, and continued dramatically. “I must save this bread. — I must make it last as long us I can; but I will never recant. — never! ”

Effie really shuddered at the tone, and was about to tear open the tomb, when, unfortunately, Betsey Thomas appeared, to tell Ellen that it was her bedtime. Betsey cried out, and scolded, and pulled the ash-covered Ellen from her martyr’s grave and into the house, to her intense mortification and anger.

“You go right straight to bed!” said Betsey. “My! just look at you! Well, you can’t go on the porch to say good-night. I ‘ll tell your grandmother: see if I don’t, you naughty girl, you! ”

In the midst of the tirade Effie slunk away, and Ellen battled with the servant alone. But in the end she went upstairs to bed, and cried, and thought of what Effie had said of the hardness of her life, and prayed a great deal, with that bitter piety which is a form of resentment and is not confined to adolescence. She looked at her arm, which Betsey had griped with plump fingers while expressing forcible opinions, and saw a faint red mark. She decided to show this mark to her grandmother, but was dismayed to see that the redness was disappearing, and so pinched it a little, that it might hear witness to Betsey’s behavior.

As she lay in her little bed. looking out at the fading sky, where suddenly, between the branches of the pear-tree, a star shook and then burned clear, she could hear the murmur of voices, and sometimes a little low, pleasant laughter: and she reflected that Effie was with the grown people, while she had been sent to bed! —sent to bed and pinched! Oh, how miserable she was! How cruel her grandmother was to oblige her to go to bed at half past eight, like a baby, while Effie stayed downstairs with the company!

Ellen realized that her eyes were wet, and she shut them tightly, so that the tears would show upon her lashes; her grandmother, when she came to her bedside, as she did the last thing every night, should see that Ellen had been crying, and then she would feel badly. Ellen turned over on her back, so that the pillow should not dry the tears, and determined to lie awake to note the effect upon Mrs. Dale. She extended her arm, too, with the sleeve of her night-gown well pushed up above the fading illustration of Betsey’s unkindness. The thought of Mrs. Dale’s remorse began to soften her. and then —

But it was morning, and Betsey was saying, “Come, get up. Ellen, or you ’ll be late for worship. And all the room was full of sunshine, and it was not until an hour later that she remembered her wrongs.

IV.

The friendship between Ellen and Effie grew, in those pleasant summer days, very rapidly. They saw each other constantly, and, as though that were not enough, corresponded by the aid of something that they called a “telegraph,”—a string from the window of Ellen’s bedroom to the big locust-tree just within Mr. Temple’s grounds. At first Ellen’s feeling for Effie had been ecstatic devotion; she knew for at least a week the tremulous pangs of bliss and pain, the rankling stab of jealousy, the spur of the desire for approbation, the impulsive and ingenious flattery of the lover, —all that goes to make up what is called falling in love. And then her idol shattered the idealization with a wholesome squabble, and Ellen came down to commonplace friendship, in which in games and fancies she was first. In the generosity of her imagination she told Effie of a plan she and Lydia had of digging up a great stone in the woods, under which Ellen was convinced were buried many Indian warriors, together with bags of gold, tomahawks, and copper spears. It was their intention to dig the boulder up, and then present the buried wealth to their grateful relatives. The skeletons of the Indians Lydia and Ellen were to keep for themselves.

Effie entered cheerfully into the project, but she did not cure to dig; and the stone, gray with lichen, and bedded deep in ferns and moss and years of fallen forest leaves, continued to seal the riches in which Ellen firmly believed. Effie would sit under a tree and watch Ellen tugging and straining at a big stick thrust as a lever under one side of the rock, or digging until her face was as crimson as the single columbine that nodded on the great stone’s breast. Effie had not a very lively faith in the skeletons beneath the stone, but she liked to hear Ellen talk about them. “Will they be in coffins? ” she inquired placidly.

“No,” Ellen told her; “they’ll he wrapped in wampum, — that ’s golden robes, I think; and they’ll have necklaces of bear’s teeth, and strings and strings of scalps! Lydia and I meant to keep the scalps, but you can have some.” She was very earnest; she could fancy so clearly the great moment when the rock should be at last, raised from its bed, — she saw it heaving up, rocking, balancing, crushing over, and rolling with tremendous bounds down the hillside. She knew just how the grave beneath it would look: a square hole in the black soft forest earth, fringed with ferns and windflowers ; solemn figures lying straight and still within it, —figures holding burnished spears, and glittering with gold and gems, and decked with eagle’s feathers,— leathers still shining with their vast and finding flights about the sun. A hundred times Ellen had looked forward to the moment when she should stand staring down at these things, while high up, with faint, far sound, the tops of the forest trees stirred between her and the blue sky.

As this project involved more or less hard work, Effie liked better the acting out some of Ellen’s romances of during and of love. Lydia, as a third child, would have added much to their games, but Effie did not like her, and so she was left out of all these joys. Ellen no longer urged her to “walk down by the fence in the east pasture; ” Ellen’s own faithlessness made her say that the disloyalty was Lydia’s; but beside that, her former friend seemed very young!

That Ellen and Effie were so much together was pleasing not only to the two children, but to the entire Temple household. Miss Jane had begged Mrs. Dale to allow her granddaughter to be with Effie as much as possible. “Because,” she explained, “Ellen is such a dear child, so modest and well behaved, that I am sure her example will be good for Effie.”

Miss Jane said this at the first meeting of the sewing society at which she was present. She and Mrs. Dale were waiting in the church porch after the meeting, wateliing an unexpected downpour of summer rain. “As soon as the carriage comes, 1 ‘11 take you home, Jane Temple,” Mrs. Dale said ; “you can’t walk up the hill in this rain.”

There was something in her voice that made the younger woman redden, and answer in quick excuse, " I suppose no one at home has noticed the storm, and so the carriage has not been sent for me.”

“I suppose not. Mrs. Dale agreed dryly. Like everybody else in Old Chester, she blamed Jane Temple because her family neglected her.

“Besides,” Miss Temple asserted, “everybody knows I like the rain. No, I don’t mind walking, thank you.”

“No doubt,” said Mrs. Dale; “but it will give me pleasure to have you, my dear, so I hope you will come. I don’t know what, has happened to Morris; he should have been here five minutes ago.”

The two ladies fell into an uncomfortable silence. The rain dripped steadily from the pitch roof of the porch, and fell into the pebbly gutters below with the sharp running chime of little bells; the bare earth under the branches of the fir-trees on either side of the path gleamed with pools, and the grass beyond, growing thick about the gray tombstones, seemed greener every moment.

“It is quite a rain,” Miss Jane admitted reluctantly. “Perhaps I had better drive; but will you let me stop and get a prescription filled for sister ?

“Why, certainly,” said Mrs. Dale.

“ You know Willie King has taken Mr. Tommy’s place. I suppose you know that Mr, Tommy has disappeared again?” She was careful not to look at Miss Jane.

“So I heard,” Miss Jane answered.

“It’s very vexing in Mr. Tommy to run away in this fashion. ” Mrs. Dale went on. “I wanted him to teach Ellen Latin this summer; you know he is quite a scholar in his small way — Ah, here is the carriage. Get in, my dear;” and then, a moment later, “I wonder if your sister-in-law would allow Ellen to have an hour or two a week with Euphemia’s governess? ”

Miss Jane, whose face had flushed at Mr. Tommy’s name, hastened to say that she was sure Mrs. Temple would be glad to make such an arrangement; then she made her little speech about Ellen’s influence. And so it came about that Ellen went to Mr. Temple’s house twice a week for her Latin, and at least once beside to spend the afternoon with Effie. This, Mrs. Dale felt, was only doing what she could, as a friend of the family, to improve Henry Temple’s neglected child. Ellen carried on this missionary work with a zeal which her grandmother never suspected.

On the hill, up which the orchard sloped to the edge of the woods, was a latticed summer-house. It was old, and long ago the rain had painted it a faint, soft gray; there were vines all about it, which almost hid the diamond-shaped windows in its sides, and lilacs and wild cherries crowded so closely around it that any one looking up from the kitchen garden, or even passing through the orchard, would never have guessed that the two children met in it almost every day. And could their conversation on a certain Sunday afternoon have been overheard. Miss jane might not have been so sure of Ellen’s influence upon Effie, and it is probable that not even Mrs. Dale’s willingness to be of service to Henry Temple would have made her consent to the intimacy between the children.

“I don’t think,” Ellen was remonstrating. “that you ought to speak so to Miss Jane.”

“I don’t care.” said Effie, ”I won’t he ordered around by anybody. I ‘m not like you ! ”

The two children were sitting on the steps of the summer-house; they could look down into the orchard, and over the roof of the Dale house which lay below them. Beyond were the white, dusty turnpike and the meadows, and then the blue curve of the Ohio River. It was very silent in the orchard; only the faint rustle of the leaves in the woods behind them and their own hushed voices broke the sunny quiet.

“ Do you have to learn hymns every Sunday ?" Effie had said, in response to Ellen’s request that, she would hear her say her hymn. “I would n’t be you for anything! Yes I ’ll hear you. Go on : ‘Softly now ’ ” —

Ellen’s voice sounded as though she were half ashamed.

Effie, scarcely waiting for the last line, closed the book with a bang and tossed it into her friend’s lap. “Aunt Jane wanted to make me learn a hymn on Sundays, and I just told her I would n’t. She asked me if I would n’t learn one; and I said, ‘ I can’t. I can’t, I can’t, so there, now! ’ I knew if I did it once, she ‘d say I could, and then I might have to do it again.”

It was here that Ellen made her protest for Miss Jane, but Effie only tossed her head. “Do you think I care what she says ? Nobody cares what aunt Jane says. Why, look here; I ’ll tell you something about her,—only it ’s a secret! ”

“I ’ll never tell,” Ellen declared.

But she was not much interested; she was too conscious that it was Sunday. Sunday visiting was not approved of by Old Chester, at least among the children, and even the occasional afternoon calls of grown persons were more or less apologetic. That Ellen, who had been allowed to go out into the garden to study her hymn, should have dared to meet “the Temple child, ” and spend the long, still, sunshiny hours in idle talk, was something that Mrs. Dale would not have forbidden, because it would never have seemed possible.

Before this new friendship came into Ellen’s life, her Sunday afternoons, in summer, had had a distinct and happy character of their own. There were always some verses from the Bible to be studied, and a hymn. And so, book in hand, murmuring over and over words which had little meaning in her ears, she wandered about the garden, “getting by heart,” as she expressed it. some of the noblest, expressions of the spiritual life. Sometimes she stopped to talk to the flowers; sometimes to lay her cheek against, the ground, and look thtrough the mist of grass stems, and weave her little fancies about the world of bee and butterfly find blossom; not unfrequently she climbed into the low branches of her favorite apple-tree, and “preached, like Dr. Lavendar, to the congregation below her of bending and rippling timothy. To hear herself talk of piety and obedience gave Ellen all the satisfaction of good behavior; her exhortations were so earnest that she mistook them for feelings, —a mistake incidental, perhaps, to the pulpit. She might stop at this stage to repeat her hymn, and then, still murmuring it to herself, go down below the terrace where the violets grew thick under a larch-tree; to sit down among them, and put a little finger under a blossom’s chin and look into its meek eye, gave her far more joy than any mere plucking flowers would have done. She was very apt to come to this part of the garden for a certain ceremony which she called “marrying the grass.” She would kneel down and tie two stalks of blossoming grass together, and pronounce some solemn gibberish over them which she said was the marriage ceremony : —

Ellen never spoke of these fancies to her grandmother, not from any secrecy or reserve, but because of their absolute conunonplaceness. If she ever reflected upon them at all, it was to suppose that Mrs. Dale and everybody else in the world had the same pleasant thoughts.

Beside her pretty romancing, she had long theological arguments with herself. Mrs. Dale never imagined the religious fogs into which her granddaughter wandered, or how again and again she wearied her little brain over the puzzle of personal responsibility. Nor did she ever fancy the heartache with which sometimes, romancing over, the child sat down to plan ways and means ot showing her grandmother her love; for she thought, if she could only express that, perhaps Mrs. Dale would kiss and cuddle her, as she had once seen a gypsy mother caress a little swarthy black-eyed child. Swaying to and fro, her head on her knees, her mop of brown hair falling forward about her ears. Ellen agonized over her sins, which she was sure kept her from her grandmother’s heart. She thought of things she might do to prove her affection: pick all the flowers in her garden and put them down for Mrs. Dale to walk on; kiss the hem of her dress; climb up to the top of the locust-tree and hang by her feet from the highest branch, to give her grandmother pleasure. She thought of all these things, and many more; and yet, somehow, her little, crowding, impetuous love remained unspoken.

The meetings with Effie in the summer-house were, in a certain way, of a healthier character than such dreams; if only they had not been stained by the consciousness of Mrs. Dale’s disapproval !

And here, on this still July Sunday, the two children were. Ellen’s hymnbook was open on her knee, and she had silenced her conscience for a moment by thinking that she would say to her grandmother, in a casual way, “ I saw Effie this afternoon, as I was walking in our orchard, and I asked her to hear me say my hymn.” The prospect of confession lightened her heart, and, the hymn repeated, made her stay on to hear the secret that Effie promised. “I ‘11 never tell,” she urged.

“Well,” began Effie, edging a little closer to her friend, “you know Mr. Tommy? I mean the apothecary man. ” Ellen nodded. “Well, you know how he went away, the last time we were in Old Chester, — oh, years and years and years ago, when I was a little girl, — and nobody knew where he ‘d gone, and he never came back until after we went to town; and he ’s gone away this summer again, and nobody knows where he is ? ”

“Yes,” said Ellen, but she was disappointed. Grown-up people did not interest her; and beside, there was nothing secret so far. “ Everybody knows that,” she said.

“ But nobody knows why he went, Effie proceeded, “except me. It was aunty! ” Ellen looked puzzled. “Goose!” cried Effie. “He was in love with her!

A little more color came into Ellen ’s rosy cheeks. “ Effie. Betsey Thomas says it is n’t nice for little girls to talk about — that. ”

Effie laughed shrilly. “Why, I’m eleven months and two days younger than you, and I’ ve been in love myself.”‘

“Oh, Effie!”

“Yes, I have. Well, I am now. too. He ’s — oh, he ’s perfectly lovely. He has a market on the avenue, about three blocks away from our house. And he’s as big — oh, twice as big as papa. He wears a white apron in the shop, and he’s just lovely. And I used to be in love with my cousin, John Lavendar. We were engaged. He gave me a pressed rose, and I wore it around my neck on a black silk thread; and I gave him a pressed pansy, and he kept it in his watch. We were going to be married when we were fourteen, and we were going to have six children, three girls and three boys. That was when we were engaged. But I told him I did n’t want aunt Mary Lavendar for a mother-in-law ; she ’s cross, and I hate cross people. And then he got tired of me,” she ended cheerfully. Ellen was speechless with interest. “I was n’t mad; I was tired of him, too. I ’ll tell you how it was. We were playing croquet, and a little girl, — I think she’s a relation of his. her name ’s Rose, — she came walking along with her nurse. My! she was so little; she was n’t more than four. And John said, ‘ Effie, if Rose was a little older, she ‘d do forme, would n’t she?’ And 1 said, ‘Well. she ’ll get older, and I think I like her brother better than you, so let ’s change.’ So we changed.”

“Are you engaged to her brother? ” Ellen inquired, with anxiety.

“Oh, no,” Effie said pensively. “I saw the marketman then, so I did n’t care for Rose’s brother. But this was the way it was about aunty. Mr. Tommy fell in love with her. and he proposed. I know, because I heard papa tell mamma that he came in and found him proposing to aunty. Just think ! I wonder what he said ? ‘ Will you be mine?’ I suppose. But papa, he would n’t allow such a thing, of course. Mr. Tommy, just an apothecary, you know, and to fall in love with my aunt! And any way, she can’t ever get married ; she has to take care of us. Well, papa sent him off, I tell you! Papa was awfully mad. I peeked in the door and saw him. And then Mr. Tommy ran. I saw him. He ran and ran, as hard as his legs could carry him. And the next day his house was all shut up, and he didn’t come back to Old Chester until we ’d gone away. ”

“And was Miss Jane mad, too? ” “Aunty? No; that’s the joke of it. She liked him. She thought he’d come back. Nellie, would you rather marry a sailor or a man? I ‘m going to marry the captain of a Cunurder, so that I can go to sea all the time. ”

Ellen was horrified. “Effie, it is n’t right to talk that way, and on Sunday, too ! And — the marketman? ”

“As though Sunday made any difference! Goodness, I would n’t be like you for anything. —being told all the time things are n’t right, and being ordered round by everybody. I would n’t stand it.”

Ellen’s face flushed. “I can’t help it. ” she said sullenly.

“I ’d help it,” Effie assured her.

“ How ? ”

“Well, said Effie, “in the first place, I ‘d just talk right out. I ‘d say, " Grandma, I in too old to be ordered round, and—and I won’t, stand it! ’ And then, if she did n’t stop being cruel, I’d run away ! ”

“Oh, I ’ve thought of that lots of times.”Ellen said dolefully, “only I don’t know where I ’d go.”

“Have you thought of it? Oh. Nellie! Let’s talk about, it; let ’s do it. I ’ll go. too. I ’m tired of living at home, though they are not quite as unkind at mv house as they are at your house. I ’ve decided to do something; I in not quite sure what. I did think of going on the stage, but I don’t know but what I ’d rather be a missionary. It would be awfully nice to go to Africa and see the Great Desert. I tell you what let’s do: let’s run away and he missionaries. You know lots of hymns, don’t you? ”

“Yes,’ Ellen said, with enthusiasm (and added, in her own mind, that she would tell her grandmother that she and Effie had talked about being missionaries). “But we ’re not very old, Effie ?”

“ We ’re old enough to teaeh the heathen.” said Etfie piously. “I was confirmed at Easter, so of course it ’s all right for me. Have you been confirmed ? ” Ellen shook her head, and Effie looked concerned. “Well, perhaps then it wouldn’t do for you to be a missionary; but I ’d run away, anyhow. ”

“I hadn’t thought of being a missionary, ” Ellen acknowledged; “I only meant to run away. I used to think I’d take one of the benches on the front porch and turn it upside down, so it would be a boat, you know. Then at one end I ‘d put some loaves of bread and a little barrel of water, and may be a ham. Well, then I ‘d get it down to the river, and push it in, and go floating off. Pretty soon I ‘d reach the Mississippi.” Ellen’s eyes grew vague with her dream. She saw it all as she spoke,— the yellow water lapping and rippling against the sides of the upturned bench, the green meadows along the shore, the sudden splash of paddle-wheels, as. perhaps, some great steamboat passed her, and, disappearing among the hills, left, like a drift of melody, the sound of its calliope behind it. “When I got to the Caribbean Sea,” Ellen went on, “I ‘d find a desert island and live on it. I ‘d eat cocoanuts and breadfruit, and get a man Friday and some goats. And then I ’d send beautiful presents home.” Ellen paused to think, not of the difficulty of transportation, but, with bitter joy, that such presents would be coals of fire to her grandmother. “But perhaps it would be better to be a missionary,” she ended.

“Course it would,” Effie assured her, and they began to make many plans.

And when, that evening, after tea, Ellen stood before her grandmother, repeating her hymn, she was much too full of these exalted plans to remember to confess how she had spent her afternoon. She heard Mrs. Dale’s comments on the hymn, received her quiet kiss, and was told that she might walk about in the garden till bedtime. Her mind was still intent upon voyages and desert islands and converted cannibals, but something in the touch of the soft old hand upon her head stirred the child’s heart. Confession rushed to her lips.

“Oh!” she said, flinging her arms about Mrs. Dale’s neck, “I love you very much; only I — I ” — The tears were in her eyes, and her hot face was buried in the spotless neckerchief.

“ There, my dear, there; control yourself, Ellen. Ah, my child, if, instead of protestations, you would be an obedient little girl, how much more that would prove your love than these foolish outbursts! ” Mrs. Dale sighed. Ellen drew back quickly,— rudely, her grandmother thought. “Be more gentle in your movements,” she said; “do not be so abrupt.”

“Yes’m,” Ellen answered, with a sob in her throat. “Oh, how I hate grandmother!” she said between her teeth, as she darted down into the garden. There, below the terrace, she threw herself, sobbing, on the grass that grew deep and soft under the solemn branches of a larch. The check to her impetuous love caused her to forget her own wrong-doing. She said to herself that nobody loved her, and she was very wretched. Little Ellen had the temperament which made it possible to observe her sorrows and measure her emotions; life was always more or less spectacular to her, and she exaggerated her woes for very interest in them. Just now. as she was so ill treated, she wished she might be very ill and die. It gave her pleasure to fancy her sufferings and the grief of her friends; especially did her mind dwell on the neglected Lydia, whose astonishment and sorrow filled her with a delightful sense of power in being able to produce such an effect. “Or if I could only be drowned " she reflected, growing happier each moment. “When they found me in the river, they ‘d carry me home, and how sorry they ‘d be! ” She closed her eyes, and saw her white dress (a white dress is necessary for an effective suicide ), saw her white dress dripping and clinging to her figure, and her long hair (for somehow her hair must be long), her long hair trailing upon the ground, wet and straight. She thought how pale her face would be, how tightly her eyes would be closed ; she decided, with satisfaction. that Betsey would cry and say she was sorry for all her wickedness; and she thought of Lydia’s fright and of her grandmother’s repentant grief. At that she involuntarily sobbed, which interested her so much that she began to pity and forgive everybody, and a little later went very happily to bed.

Margaret Deland.