to her home. "Oh, mother," she cried, breaking in upon the dialogue
of anger which was still going on there with her little tremulous
flute--"oh, mother, father is crying!"

"I don't care," answered her mother, fiercely, her temper causing
her to lose sight of the child's agitation. "I don't care. If it
wasn't for you, I would leave him. I wouldn't live as I am doing. I
would leave everybody. I am tired of this awful life. Oh, if it
wasn't for you, Ellen, I would leave everybody and start fresh!"

"You can leave _me_ whenever you want to," said Eva, her handsome
face burning red with wrath, and she went out of the room, which was
suffocating with the fumes of the burning wool, tossing her black
head, all banged and coiled in the latest fashion.

Of late years Fanny had sunk her personal vanity further and further
in that for her child. She brushed her own hair back hard from her
temples, and candidly revealed all her unyouthful lines, and dwelt
fondly upon the arrangement of little Ellen's locks, which were of a
fine, pale yellow, as clear as the color of amber.

She never recut her skirts or her sleeves, but she studied anxiously
all the slightest changes in children's fashions. After her sister
had left the room with a loud bang of the door, she sat for a moment
gazing straight ahead, her face working, then she burst into such a
passion of hysterical wailing as the child had never heard. Ellen,
watching her mother with eyes so frightened and full of horror that
there was no room for childish love and pity in them, grew very
pale. She had left the door by which she had entered open; she gazed
one moment at her mother, then she turned and slipped out of the