After Ellen's experience in running away, she dreamed her dreams with a difference.

The breath of human passion had stained the pure crystal of her childish imagination; she peopled all her air-castles, and sounds of wailing farewells floated from the White North of her fancy after the procession of the evergreen trees in the west yard, and the cherry-trees on the east had found out that they were not in the Garden of Eden.

In those days Ellen grew taller and thinner, and the cherubic roundness of her face lengthened into a sweet wistfulness of wonder and pleading, as of one who would look farther, since she heard sounds and saw signs in her sky which indicated more beyond.

Andrew and Fanny watched her more anxiously than ever, and decided not to send her to school before spring, though all the neighbors exclaimed at their tardiness in so doing.
"She'll be two years back of my Hattie gettin' into the high-school," said one woman, bluntly, to Fanny, who retorted, angrily, "I don't care if she's ten years behind, if she don't lose her health." "You wait and see if she's two years behind!" exclaimed Eva, who had just returned from the shop, and had entered the room bringing a fresh breath of December air, her cheeks glowing, her black eyes shining.
Eva was so handsome in those days that she fairly forced admiration, even from those of her own sex whose delicacy of taste she offended.
She had a parcel in her hand, which she had bought at a store on her way home, for she was getting ready to be married to Jim Tenny.

"I tell you there don't nobody know what that young one can do," continued Eva, with a radiant nod of triumph.