the
letter she wrote back. I've never said so before, but I've often
thought it."

"Yes, she did," said Ellen, who had often thought so too, but never
said so.

"Elizabeth was always very independent," remarked George. "Perhaps she
thought your letter savoured of charity or pity. No Ingelow would
endure that."

"At any rate, you know she refused to come, even for a visit. She said
she could not leave the farm. She may refuse to let her child come."

"It won't do any harm to ask her," said George.

In the end, Charlotte wrote to Elizabeth and asked her to let her
daughter visit the old homestead. The letter was written and mailed in
much perplexity and distrust when once the glow of momentary
enthusiasm in the new idea had passed.

"What if Elizabeth's child is like her father?" queried Charlotte in a
half-whisper.

"Let us hope she won't be!" cried Ellen fervently. Indeed, she felt
that a feminine edition of James Sheldon would be more than she could
endure.

"She may not like us, or our ways," sighed Charlotte. "We don't know
how she has been brought up. She will seem like a stranger after all.
I really long to see Elizabeth's child, but I can't help fearing we
have done a rash thing, Ellen."

"Perhaps she may not come," suggested Ellen, wondering whether she
hoped it or feared it.

But Worth Sheldon did come. Elizabeth wrote back a prompt acceptance,
with no trace of the proud bitterness that had permeated her answer to
the former invitation. The Ingelows at the Grange were thrown into a
flutter when the letter came. In another week Elizabeth's child would
be with them.

"If only she isn't like her father," said Charlotte with foreboding,
as she aired and swept the southeast spare room for their expected
guest. They had three spare rooms at the Grange, but the aunts had
selected the southeast one for their niece because it was done in
white, "and white seems the most appropriate for a young girl," Ellen
said, as she arranged a pitcher of wild roses on the table.

"I think everything is ready," announced Charlotte. "I put the very
finest sheets on the bed, they smell deliciously of lavender, and we
had very good luck doing up the muslin curtains. It is pleasant to be
expecting a guest, isn't it, Ellen? I have often thought, although I
have never said so before, that our lives were too self-centred. We
seemed to have no interests outside of ourselves. Even Elizabeth has
been really nothing to us, you k