When Ellen reached home that night she found no one there except her father, who was sitting on the door-step in the north yard.

Her mother had gone to see her aunt Eva as soon as the dressmaker had left.

"Who was that with you ?" Andrew asked, as she drew near.
"Abby," replied Ellen.
"So you went over there ?" Ellen sat down on a lower step in front of her father.

"Yes," said she.

She half laughed up in his face, like a child who knows she has been naughty, yet knows she will not be blamed since she can count so surely on the indulgent love of the would-be blamer.
"Ellen, your mother didn't like it." "They had said so many things to me about him that I didn't feel as if I could see him, father," she said.
Andrew put a hand on her head.