She never said, "I told you so," but the thought was evident on her face, and her son saw it there.
However, he said not a word against his wife, except by implication.
Though she and her sister were making his home unbearable, he still loved her, and, even if he did not, he had something of his mother's pride.
However, at last, when Ellen was almost eight years old, matters came suddenly to a climax one evening in November.

The two sisters were having a fiercer dispute than usual.

Eva was taking her sister to task for cutting over a dress of hers for Ellen, Fanny claiming that she had given her permission to do so, and Eva denying it.

The child sat listening in her little chair with a look of dawning intelligence of wrath and wicked temper in her face, because she was herself in a manner the cause of the dissension.

Suddenly Andrew Brewster, with a fiery outburst of inconsequent masculine wrath with the whole situation, essayed to cut the Gordian knot.