"Ellen is getting real fond of dress," Fanny often said to Andrew.

He only laughed at that.
"Well, pretty birds like pretty feathers, and no wonder," said he.
But he did not laugh when Fanny added that Ellen seemed to think more about the boys than she used to.

There was scarcely a boy in the high-school who was not Ellen's admirer.

It was a curious happening in those days when Ellen was herself in much less degree the stuff of which dreams are made than she had been and would be thereafter, that she was the object of so many.

Every morning when she entered the school-room she was reflected in a glorious multiple of ideals in no one could tell how many boyish hearts.