If you do--if you think I can do anything like that--I won't love you so much." Ellen faced them both with gathering indignation.

Suddenly this ignoble conception of herself in the minds of her friends stung her to resentment.

But Abby seized her in two wiry little arms.
"I never did, I never did!" she cried.

"Don't I know what you are made of, Ellen Brewster?
Don't you think I know?
But after all, it might be better for you if you were worse.

That was all I meant." Ellen, one afternoon, set out in her pretty challis, a white ground with long sprays of blue flowers running over it, and a blue ribbon at her neck and waist, and her leghorn hat with white ribbons, and a knot of forget-me-nots under the brim.