Had she not heard them say, her own mother and father say, that they would be better off and happier with her out of the way, and she their dearest loved and most carefully cherished possession in the whole world?
It is a cruel fall for an apple of the eye to the ground, for its law of gravitation is of the soul, and its fall shocks the infinite.

Little Ellen felt herself sorely hurt by her fall from such fair heights; she was pierced by the sharp thorns of selfish interests which flourish below all the heavenward windows of life.
Afterwards, when her mother and father tried to make her tell them why she ran away, she could not say; the answer was beyond her own power.
There was no snow on the ground, but the earth was frozen in great ribs after a late thaw.

Ellen ran painfully between the ridges which a long line of ice-wagons had made with their heavy wheels earlier in the day.

When the spaces between the ridges were too narrow for her little feet, she ran along the crests, and that was precarious.
She fell once and bruised one of her delicate knees, then she fell again, and struck the knee on the same place.

It hurt her, and she caught her breath with a gasp of pain.