When Ellen's father, Andrew Brewster, came home from the shop, she would speak to him aside as he was washing his hands at the kitchen sink, and tell him that it seemed to her that Ellen looked kind of "pindlin'." Then Andrew, before he sat down at the dinner-table, would take Ellen's face in his two moist hands, look at her with anxiety thinly veiled by facetiousness, rub his rough, dark cheek against her soft, white one until he had reddened it, then laugh, and tell her she looked like a bo'sn.

Ellen never quite knew what her father meant by bo'sn, but she understood that it signified something very rosy and hearty indeed.
Ellen's father always picked out for her the choicest and tenderest bits of the humble dishes, and his keen eyes were more watchful of her plate than of his own.

Always after Ellen's mother had said to her father that she thought Ellen looked pindling he was late about coming home from the shop, and would turn in at the gate laden with paper parcels.

Then Ellen would find an orange or some other delicacy beside her plate at supper.

Ellen's aunt Eva, her mother's younger sister, who lived with them, would look askance at the tidbit with open sarcasm.