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," Fanny Brewster
said, with a noble humbling of herself before her child.

"No, you won't," said Eva.