own."

"I want my mother!" Ellen cried out suddenly, with an exceedingly
bitter and terrified and indignant cry.

"There, there, darling!" Cynthia whispered; "there is a beautiful
red-and-green parrot down-stairs in a great cage that shines like
gold, and you shall have him for your own, and he can talk. You
shall have him for your very own, sweetheart. Oh, you darling! you
darling!"

Ellen felt herself overborne and conquered by this tide of love,
which compelled like her mother's, though this woman was not her
mother, and her revolt of loyalty was subdued for the time. After
all, whether we like it or not, love is somewhat of an impersonal
quality to all children, and perhaps to their elders, and it may be
in such wise that the goddess is evident.

She did not shrink from Cynthia any more then, but suffered her to
lift her out of bed as if she were a baby and set her on a white fur
rug, into which her feet sank, to her astonishment. Her mother had
only drawn-in rugs, which Ellen had watched her make. She was a
little afraid of the fur rug.

Ellen was very small, and seemed much younger than she was by reason
of her baby silence and her little clinging ways. Then, too, she had
always been so petted at home, and through never going to school had
not been in contact with other children. Often the bloom of
childhood is soonest rubbed off by friction with its own kind.
Diamond cut diamond holds good in many cases.