Then Ellen crept down-stairs, though it was almost midnight, where her father and mother and grandmother were still talking over the matter.

Fanny seemed almost as bad as her sister.

It was evident that there was in the undisciplined Loud family a dangerous strain if too far pressed.

She was lying down on the lounge, with Andrew holding her hand.
"Oh, my God! Oh, my God! Poor Eva!" she kept repeating.
Then she threw off Andrew's hand, sprang to her feet, and began to walk the room.
"She'll be as bad as her sister if she keeps on," said Mrs.Zelotes, quite audibly, but Fanny paid no attention to that.
"What is goin' to be done?
Oh, my God, what is goin' to be done ?" she wailed.

"There she is locked up with two men watchin' her lest she do herself a harm, and it's got to cost eighteen dollars a week, unless she's put in with the State poor, and then nobody knows how she'll be treated.