and voice, like some enchantress who cast her spell by means of her
silver tongue. Nobody knew how she dreaded that outcry of Ellen's,
"I want my mother!" It gave her the sensations of a murderess, even
while she persisted in her crime. So she talked, diverting the
child's mind from its natural channel by sheer force of eloquence.
She told a story about the parrot, which caused Ellen's eyes to
widen with thoughtful wonder; she promised her treasures and
pleasures which made her mouth twitch into smiles in spite of
herself; but with all her efforts, when after breakfast they went
into another room, Ellen broke out again, "I want my mother!"

Cynthia turned white and struggled with herself for a moment, then
she spoke. That which she was doing of the nature of a crime was in
reality more foreign to her nature than virtue, and her instinct was
to return to her narrow and straight way in spite of its cramping of
love and natural longings. "Who is your mother, darling?" she asked.
"And what is your name?"

But Ellen was silent, except for that one cry, "I want my mother!"
The persistency of the child, in spite of her youth and her
distress, was almost invulnerable. She came of a stiff-necked family
on one side at least, and sometimes stiff-neckedness is more
pronounced in a child than in an adult, in whom it may be tempered
by experience and policy. "I want my mother! I want my mother!"
Ellen repeated in her gentle wail as plaintively inconsequent as the
note of a bird, and would say no more.

Then Cynthia displayed the parrot, but a parrot was too fine and
fierce a bird for Ellen. She would have preferred him as a subject
for her imagination, which could not be harmed by his beak and