If they see fit to keep 'em home from school until they're women grown, and if they think it's best not to punish 'em when they run away, why they must.

I 'ain't got no right to say anythin', and I 'ain't." "You--" began Fanny, and then she stopped short, and Eva began arranging her hair before the glass.

"The wind blew so comin' home," she said, "that my hair is all out." The visiting woman stared with a motion of adjustive bewilderment, as one might before a sudden change of wind, then she looked, as a shadowy motion disturbed the even light of the room and little Ellen passed the window.

She knew at once, for she had heard the gossip, that the ready tongues of recrimination were hushed because of the child, and then Ellen entered.
The winter afternoon was waning and the light was low; the child's face, with its clear fairness, seemed to gleam out in the room like a lamp with a pale luminosity of its own.
The three women, the mother, and aunt, and the visiting neighbor, all looked at her, and Ellen smiled up at them as innocently sweet as a flower.

There was that in Ellen's smile and regard at that time which no woman could resist.