knew no respect for even the rich Miss Cynthia Lennox.
“Here’s your parcel, lady,” she said,
in her rough young voice, its shrillness modified
by hoarseness from too much shouting for cash boys
during this busy season, and she thrust, with her
absent eyes upon a gentleman coming towards her, a
parcel into Cynthia’s hands. Somehow the
touch of that parcel seemed to bring Cynthia to her
senses. It was a kodak which she had been purchasing
for the little boy who had lived with her, and whom
it had almost broken her heart to lose. She remembered
what her friend Lyman Risley had said, that it might
make trouble for others besides herself. She
took her parcel with that involuntary meekness which
the proudest learn before the matchless audacity of
youthful ignorance when it fairly asserts itself,
and passed out of the store to her waiting carriage.
Ellen saw her.
“That was Cynthia Lennox, wasn’t it?”
Fanny said, with something like awe. “Wasn’t
that an elegant cloak she had on? I guess it was
Russian sable.”
“I don’t care if it was, it ain’t
a mite handsomer than my cape lined with squirrel,”
said Mrs. Zelotes.
Ellen looked intently at a game on the counter.
It was ten o’clock when Ellen went home.
She had been into all the principal stores which were
decorated for Christmas. Her brain resembled a
kaleidoscope as she hurried along at her mother’s
hand. Every thought seemed to whirl the disk,
and new and more dazzling combinations appeared, but
the principle which underlay the whole was that of
the mystery of festivity and joy upon the face of the
earth, of which this Christmas wealth was the key.
The Brewsters had scarcely reached the factory neighborhood
when there was a swift bound ahead of them and the
familiar whoop.
“There’s that boy again,” said Mrs.
Zelotes.
She made various remonstrances, and even Andrew, when
the boy had passed his own home in his persistent
dogging of them, called out to him, as did Fanny,
but he was too far ahead to hear. The boy followed
them quite to their gate, proceeding with wild spurts
and dashes from shadow to shadow, and at last reappeared
from behind one of the evergreen trees in the west
yard, springing out of its long shadow with strange
effect. He darted close to Ellen as she passed
in the gate, crammed something into her hand, and was
gone. Andrew could not catch him, though he ran
after him. “He ran like a rabbit,”
he said, coming breathlessly into the house, where
they were looking at the treasure the boy had thrust
upon Ellen. It was a marvel of a patent top,
which the boy had long desired to own. He had
spent all his money on it, and his mother was cheated
of her Christmas present, but he had given, and Ellen
had received, her first token of love.
The next spring Ellen went to school. When a
child who has reigned in undisputed sovereignty at
home is thrust among other children at school, one
of two things happens: either she is scorned and
rebelled against, and her little crown of superiority
rolled in the dust of the common playground, or she
extends the territories of her empire. Ellen
extended hers, though involuntarily, for there was
no conscious thirst for power in her.
