"You're all worn out with work now," said she, "and there you bought that beautiful pin for me with your hard earnings." "I wish it had been a great deal better," said Abby, fervently.
She had given Ellen a gold brooch for a graduating-gift, and had paid a week's wages for it, and gone without her new dress, and stayed away from the graduation, but that last Ellen never knew; Abby had told her that she was sick.
That evening Robert Lloyd and his aunt Cynthia Lennox called on the Brewsters.

Ellen was under the trees in the west yard when she heard a carriage stop in front of the house and saw the sitting-room lamp travel through the front entry to the front door.

She wondered indifferently who it was.

Carriages were not given to stopping at their house of an evening; then she reflected that it might be some one to get her mother to do some sewing, and remained still.
It was a bright moonlight night; the whole yard was a lovely dapple of lights and shadows.

Ellen had a vivid perception of the beauty of it all, and also that unrest and yearning which comes often to a young girl in moonlight.