Father, he said nothing, only when next Sunday had come, and I had laid out his Sunday things and his hat, all brushed as usual, he says—­

’Put ’em away, my girl.  I don’t believe in Sunday.  How can I believe in all that, and my Ellen gone to shame?’

And, after that, Sundays was the same to him as weekdays, and the folks looked shy at us, and I think they thought that, what with Ellen’s running away and father’s working on Sundays, we was on the high-road to the pit of destruction.

And so the time went on, and it was Christmas.  The bells was ringing for Christmas Eve, and I says to father:  ’O father! come to church.  Happen it’s all true, and Ellen’s an honest woman, after all.’

And he lifted his head and looked at me, and at that moment there come a soft little knock at the door.  I knew who it was afore I had time to stir a foot to go across the kitchen and open the door to her.  She blinked 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.’