ed her eyes at the light as I opened the door to her.
Oh, pale and thin her face was that used to be so rosy-red, and--

'May I come in?' she said, as if it wasn't her own home. And father,
he looked at her like a man that sees nothing, and I was frightened
what he might do, like the fool I was, that ought to have known
better.

'I'm very tired,' says Ellen, leaning against the door-post; 'I have
come from a very long way.'

And the next minute father makes two long steps to the door, and his
arms is round her, and she a-hanging on his neck, and they two
holding each other as if they would never let go. And so she come
home, and I shut the door.

And in all that time father and me, we couldn't make too much of
her, me being that thankful to the Lord that He had let our dear
come back to us; and never a word did she say to me of him that had
been her ruin. But one night when I asked her, silly-like, and
hardly thinking what I was doing, some question about him, father
down with his fist on the table, and says he--

'When you name that name, my girl, you light hell in me, and if ever
I see his damned face again, God help him and me too.'

And so I held my stupid tongue, and sat sewing with Ellen long days,
and it was a happy, sad time, if a time can be sad and happy both.

And it was about primrose-time that her time come, and we had kept
it quiet, and nobody knew but us and Mrs. Jarvis, that lived in the
cottage next to ours, and was Ellen's godmother, and loved her like
her own daughter; and when the baby come, Ellen says, 'Is it a boy
or a girl?' And we told her it was a boy.

Then, says she, 'Thank God for that! My baby won't live to know such
shame as mine.'

And there wasn't one of us dared tell her that God meant no shame or
pain or grief at all should come to her little baby, because it was
dead. But by-and-by she would have it to lie by her, and we said No:
it was asleep; and for all we said she guessed the truth somehow.
And she began to cry, the tears running down her cheeks and wetting
the linen about her, and she began to moan, 'I want my baby--oh,
bring me my little baby that I have never seen yet. I want to say
"good-bye" to it, for I shall never go where it is going.'

And father said, 'Bring her the child.'

I had dressed the poor little thing--a pretty boy, and would have
been a fine man--in one of the gowns I had taken a pleasure in
sewing for it to wear, and the little cap with the crimpe