That, however, Ellen decided within herself was not nearly as pretty as one with "A Gift of Friendship" on it in gilt letters which her grandmother kept on the whatnot in her best parlor.

This had been given to her aunt Ellen, who died when she was a young girl, and was to be hers when she grew up.

She did not care as much for the egg and toast either as for the griddle-cakes and maple syrup at home.

All through breakfast Cynthia talked to her, and in such manner as the child had never heard.

That fine voice, full of sweetest modulations and cadences, which used the language with the precision of a musician, was as different from the voices at home with their guttural slurs and maimed terminals as the song of a spring robin from the scream of the parrot which Ellen could hear in some distant room.