Andrew reached up and took hold of Ellen’s hands, and drew her down on his knee as if she had been a child.  “Ellen, look here,” he said, in an intense, almost solemn voice, “father has got something to tell you.”

Fanny began to weep almost aloud.  Cynthia looked straight ahead, keeping her features still with an effort.  Robert studied the carpet pattern.

“Look here, Ellen,” said Andrew; “you know that father has always wanted to do everything for you, but he ain’t able to do all he would like to.  God hasn’t prospered him, and it seems likely that he won’t be able to do any more than he has done, if so much, in the years to come.  You know father has always wanted to send you to college, and give you an extra education so you could teach in a school where you would make a good living, and now here Miss Lennox says she heard your composition, and she has heard a good deal about you from Mr. Harris, how well you stood in the high-school, and she says she is willing to send you to Vassar College.”

Ellen turned pale.  She looked long at her father, whose pathetic, worn, half-triumphant, half-pitiful face was so near her own; then she looked at Cynthia, then back again.  “To Vassar College?” she said.

“Yes, Ellen, to Vassar College, and she offers to clothe you while you are there, but we thank her, and tell her that ain’t necessary.  We can furnish your clothes.”

“Yes, we can,” said Fanny, in a sobbing voice, but with a flash of pride.

“Well, what do you say to it, Ellen?” asked Andrew, and he asked it with the expression of a martyr.  At that moment indescribable pain was the uppermost sensation in his heart, over all his triumph and gladness for Ellen.  First came the anticipated agony of parting with her for the greater part of four years, then the pain of letting another do for his daughter what he wished to do himself.  No man would ever look in Ellen’s eyes with greater love and greater shrinking from the pain which might come of love than Andrew at that moment.

“But—­” said Ellen; then she stopped.

“What, Ellen?”

“Can you spare me for so long?  Ought I not to be earning money before that, if you don’t have much work?”

“I guess we can spare you as far as all that goes,” cried Andrew.  “I guess we can.  I guess we don’t want you to support us.”

“I rather guess we don’t,” cried Fanny.

Ellen looked at her father a moment longer with an adorable look, which Robert saw with a sidewise glance of his downcast eyes, then at her mother.  Then she slid from her father’s knee and crossed the room and stood before Cynthia.  “I don’t know how to thank you enough,” she said, “but I thank you very much, and not only for myself but for them”; she made a slight, graceful, backward motion of her shoulder towards her parents.  “I will study hard and try to do you credit,” said she.  There was something about Ellen’s direct, childlike way of looking at her, and her clear speech, which brought back to Cynthia the little girl of so many years ago.  A warm flush came over her delicate cheeks; her eyes grew bright with tenderness.