“I ought to give up going to college, and go to work in the shop,” Ellen said to herself, and she said it as one might drive a probing-knife into a sore.  “I ought to,” she repeated.  And yet she was far from resolving to give up college.  She began to argue with herself the expediancy, supposing that the money in the bank was gone, of putting a mortgage on the house.  If her father continued to have work, they might get along and pay for her aunt, who might, as the doctor had said, not be obliged to remain long in the asylum if properly cared for.  Would it not, after all, be better, since by a course at college she would be fitted to command a larger salary than she could in any other way.  “I can support them all,” reflected Ellen.  At that time the thought of Robert Lloyd, and that awakening of heart which he had brought to pass, were in abeyance.  Old powers had asserted themselves.  This love for her own blood and their need came between her and this new love, half of the senses, half of the spirit.

Amabel waked up in the early sultry dawn of the summer day with the bewilderment of one in a new world.  She stared at the walls of the room, at the shaft of sunlight streaming in the window, then at Ellen.

“Where am I?” she inquired, in a loud, querulous plaint.  Then she remembered, but she did not cry; instead, her little face took on a painfully old look.

“You are here with cousin Ellen, darling, don’t you know?” Ellen replied, leaning over her, and kissing her.

Amabel wriggled impatiently away, and faced to the wall.  “Yes, I know,” said she.

That morning Amabel would not eat any breakfast, and Fanny suggested that Ellen take her for a ride on the street-cars.  “We can get along without you for an hour,” she whispered, “and I am afraid that child will be sick.”

So Ellen and Amabel set out, leaving Fanny and the dressmaker at work, and when they were returning past the factories the noon whistles were blowing and the operatives were streaming forth.

Ellen was surprised to see her father among them as the car swept past.  He walked down the street towards home, his dinner-bag dangling at his side, his back more bent than ever.

She wondered uneasily if her father was ill, for he never went home to dinner.  She looked back at him as the car swept past, but he did not seem to see her.  He walked with an air of seeing nothing, covering the ground like an old dog with some patient, dumb end in view, heeding nothing by the way.  It puzzled her also that her father had come out of Lloyd’s instead of McGuire’s, where he had been employed all summer.  Ellen, after she reached home, watched anxiously for her father to come into the yard, but she did not see him.  She assisted about the dinner, which was a little extra on account of the dressmaker, and all the time she glanced with covert anxiety at the window, but her father did not pass it.  Finally, when she went out to the pump for a pitcher of water, she set the pitcher down, and sped to the orchard like a wild thing.  A suspicion had seized her that her father was there.