esced Eva; "I remember that young one. Lookin'
like Ellen--I'd like to see the child that did look like her; there
ain't none round these parts. I wish you could have seen folks stare
at her when I took her down street yesterday. One woman said, 'Ain't
she pretty as a picture,' so loud I heard it, but Ellen didn't seem
to."

"Sometimes I wonder if we'll make her proud," Fanny said, in a
hushed voice, with a look of admiration that savored of worship
at Ellen.

"She don't ever seem to notice," said Eva, with a hushed response.
Indeed, Ellen had seemed to pay no attention whatever to
their remarks, whether from an innate humility and lack of
self-consciousness, or because she was so accustomed to adulation
that it had become as the breath of her nostrils, to be taken no
more account of. She had seated herself in her favorite place in a
rocking-chair at a west window, with her chin resting on the sill,
and her eyes staring into the great out-of-doors, full of winds and
skies and trees and her own imaginings.

She would sit so, motionless, for hours at a time, and sometimes her
mother would rouse her almost roughly. "What be you thinkin' about,
settin' there so still?" she would ask, with eyes of vague anxiety
fixed upon her, but Ellen could never answer.

Though it was getting late, it did not seem dark as early as usual,
since there was a full moon and there was snow on the ground which
gave forth a pale light in a wide surface of reflection. However,
the moon was behind clouds, for it was beginning to snow again quite
heavily, and the white flakes drove in whirlwinds past the
street-lamp on the corner of the street. Now and then a tramping and
muffled figure came into the radius of light, then passed into the
white gloom beyond.

Fanny was preparing supper, and the light from the dining-room shone
in where Ellen sat, but the sitting-room was not lighted. Ellen
began to smell the fragrance of tea and toast, and there was a
reflection of the dining-room table and lamp outside pictured
vividly against the white sheet of storm.

Ellen knew better, but it amused her to think that her home was
out-of-doors as well as under her father's and mother's roof. Eva
passed her with her hands full of kindlings. She was going to make a
fire in the parlor-stove, for Jim Tenny was coming that evening. She
laid a tender hand on Ellen's head as she passed, and smoothed her
hair. Ellen had a sort of acquiescent wonder over her aunt