She pulled up her little frock and touched her hand to her knee, and felt it wet, then she whimpered on the lonely road, and, curiously enough, there was pity for her mother as well as for herself in her solitary grieving.
"Mother would feel pretty bad if she knew how I was hurt, enough to make it bleed," she murmured, between her soft sobs.

Ellen did not dare cry loudly, from a certain unvoiced fear which she had of shocking the stillness of the night, and also from a delicate sense of personal dignity, and a dislike of violent manifestations of feeling which had strengthened with her growth in the midst of the turbulent atmosphere of her home.

Ellen had the softest childish voice, and she never screamed or shouted when excited.

Instead of catching the motion of the wind, she still lay before it, like some slender-stemmed flower.

If Ellen had made much outcry with the hurt in her heart and the smart of her knee, she might have been heard, for the locality was thickly settled, though not in the business portion of the little city.