slender-stemmed flower. If Ellen had made much outcry with the hurt
in her heart and the smart of her knee, she might have been heard,
for the locality was thickly settled, though not in the business
portion of the little city. The houses, set prosperously in the
midst of shaven lawns--for this was a thrifty and emulative place,
and democracy held up its head confidently--were built closely along
the road, though that was lonely and deserted at that hour. It was
the hour between half-past six and half-past seven, when people were
lingering at their supper-tables, and had not yet started upon their
evening pursuits. The lights shone for the most part from the rear
windows of the houses, and there was a vague compound odor of tea
and bread and beefsteak in the air. Poor Ellen had not had her
supper; the wrangle at home had dismissed it from everybody's mind.
She felt more pitiful towards her mother and herself when she smelt
the food and reflected upon that. To think of her going away without
any supper, all alone in the dark night! There was no moon, and the
solemn brilliancy of the stars made her think with a shiver of awe
of the Old Testament and the possibility of the Day of Judgment.
Suppose it should come, and she all alone out in the night, in the
midst of all those worlds and the great White Throne, without her
mother? Ellen's grandmother, who was of a stanch orthodox breed, and
was, moreover, anxious to counteract any possible detriment as to
religious training from contact with the degenerate Louds of
Loudville, had established a strict course of Bible study for her
granddaughter at a very early age. All celestial phenomena were in
consequence transposed into a Biblical key for the child, and she
regarded the heavens swarming with golden stars as a Hebrew child of
a thousand years ago might have done.

She was glad when she came within the radius of a street light from