“And they didn’t mean what they said,” continued Andrew.  “You are the greatest blessing in this whole world to father and mother; you’re all they have got.  You don’t know what father and mother have been through, thinking you were lost and they might never see their little girl again.  Now you mustn’t ever think of what they said again.”

“And you won’t ever hear them say it again, Ellen,” Fanny Brewster said, with a noble humbling of herself before her child.

“No, you won’t,” said Eva.

“Mother is goin’ to try to do better, and have more patience, and not let you hear such talk any more,” said Fanny, kissing Ellen passionately, and rising with Andrew’s arm around her.

“I’m going to try, too, Ellen,” said Eva.

The stout woman came padding softly and heavily into the room, and there was a bright-blue silken gleam in her hand.  She waved a whole yard of silk of the most brilliant blue before Ellen’s dazzled eyes.  “There!” said she, triumphantly, “if you will tell Aunty Wetherhed where you’ve been, and all about it, she’ll give you all this beautiful silk to make a new dress for your new dolly.”

Ellen looked in the woman’s face, she looked at the blue silk, and she looked at the doll, but she was silent.

“Only think what a beautiful dress it will make!” said a woman.

“And see how pretty it goes with the dolly’s light hair,” said Fanny.

“Ellen,” whispered Andrew, “you tell father, and he’ll buy you a whole pound of candy down to the store.”

“I shouldn’t wonder if I could find something to make your dolly a cloak,” said a woman.

“And I’ll make her a beautiful little bonnet, if you’ll tell,” said another.

“Only think, a whole pound of candy!” said Andrew.

“I’ll buy you a gold ring,” Eva cried out—­“a gold ring with a little blue stone in it.”

“And you shall go to ride with mother on the cars to-morrow,” said Fanny.

“Father will get you some oranges, too,” said Andrew.

But Ellen sat silent and unmoved by all that sweet bribery, a little martyr to something within herself; a sense of honor, love for the lady who had concealed her, and upon whom her confession might bring some dire penalty; or perhaps she was strengthened in her silence by something less worthy—­possibly that stiff-neckedness which had descended to her from a long line of Puritans upon her father’s side.  At all events she was silent, and opposed successfully her one little new will to the onslaught of all those older and more experienced ones before her, though nobody knew at what cost of agony to herself.  She had always been a singularly docile and obedient child; this was the first persistent disobedience of her whole life, and it reacted upon herself with a cruel spiritual hurt.  She sat clasping the great doll, the pinks, and the pink cup and saucer before her on the table—­a lone little weak child, opposing her single individuality against so many, and to her own hurt and horror and self-condemnation, and she did not weaken; but all at once her head drooped on one side, and her father caught her.