The Portion of Labor Part 6

"Have you had your breakfast?" said f.a.n.n.y.

Then Ellen was utterly quiet. She did not speak; she made no sign or motion. She sat still, looking straight before her.

"Don't you hear, Ellen?" said Andrew. "Have you had your breakfast this morning?"

"Tell Auntie Eva if you have had your breakfast," Eva said.

Mrs. Zelotes Brewster spoke with more authority, and she went further.

"Tell grandmother if you have had your breakfast, and where you had it," said she.

But Ellen was dumb and motionless. They all looked at one another.

"Tell Aunty Wetherhed: that's a good girl," said the stout woman.

"Where are those things she had when I first saw her?" asked Mrs.

Zelotes, suddenly. Eva went into the sitting-room, and fetched them out--the bunch of pinks, the cup and saucer, and the doll. Ellen's eyes gave a quick look of love and delight at the doll.

"She had these, luggin' along in her little arms, when I first caught sight of her comin'," said Eva.

"Where did you get them, Ellen?" asked f.a.n.n.y. "Who gave them to you?"

Ellen was silent, with all their inquiring eyes fixed upon her face like a compelling battery. "Where have you been, Ellen, all the time you have been gone?" asked Mrs. Zelotes. "Now you have got back safe, you must tell us where you have been."

Andrew stooped his head down to the child's, and rubbed his rough cheek against her soft one, with his old facetious caress. "Tell father where you've been," he whispered. Ellen gave him a little piteous glance, and her lip quivered, but she did not speak.

"Where do you s'pose she got them?" whispered one neighbor to another.

"I can't imagine; that's a beautiful doll."

"Ain't it? It must have cost a lot. I know, because my Hattie had one her aunt gave her last Christmas; that one cost a dollar and ninety-eight cents, and it didn't begin to compare with this. That's a handsome cup and saucer, too."

"Yes, but you can get real handsome cups and saucers to Crosby's for twenty-five cents. I don't think so much of that."

"Them pinks must have come from a greenhouse."

"Yes, they must."

"Well, there's lots of greenhouses in the city besides the florists.

That don't help much." Then the first woman inclined her lips closely to the other woman's ear and whispered, causing the other to start back. "No, I can't believe she would," said she.

"She came from those Louds on her mother's side," whispered the first woman, guardedly, with dark emphasis.

"Ellen," said f.a.n.n.y, suddenly, and almost sharply, "you didn't take those things in any way you hadn't ought to, did you? Tell mother."

"f.a.n.n.y!" cried Andrew.

"If she did, it's the first time a Brewster ever stole," said Mrs.

Zelotes. Her face was no longer strange with unwonted sweetness as she looked at f.a.n.n.y.

Andrew put his face down to Ellen's again. "Father knows she didn't steal the things; never mind," he whispered.

Suddenly the stout woman made a soft, ponderous rush out of the room and the house. She pa.s.sed the window with oscillating swiftness.

"Where's Miss Wetherhed gone?" said one woman to another.

"She's thought of somethin'."

"Maybe she left her bread in the oven."

"No, she's thought of somethin'."

A very old lady, who had been sitting in a rocking-chair on the other side of the room, rose trembling and came to Ellen and leaned over her, looking at her with small, black, bright eyes through gold-rimmed spectacles. The old woman was deaf, and her voice was shrill and high-pitched to reach her own consciousness. "What did such a good little girl as you be run away from father and mother for?" she piped, going back to first principles and the root of the whole matter, since she had heard nothing of the discussion which had been going on about her, and had supposed it to deal with them.

Ellen gasped. Suddenly all her first woe returned upon her recollection. She turned innocent, accusing eyes upon her father's loving face, then her mother's and aunt's. "You said--you said--you--" she stammered out, but then her father and mother were both down upon their knees before her in her chair embracing her, and Eva, too, seized her little hands. "You mustn't ever think of what you heard father and mother say, Ellen," Andrew said, solemnly.

"You must forget all about it. Father and mother were both very wrong and wicked--"

"And Aunt Eva, too," sobbed Eva.

"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," f.a.n.n.y Brewster said, with a n.o.ble 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 f.a.n.n.y, kissing Ellen pa.s.sionately, 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 f.a.n.n.y.

"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 f.a.n.n.y.