That evening she wrote her daughter not to cut short her visit to get to Saint X. "Wait until Ross is ready. Then you can join him at Chicago and let him bring you."
Just about the hour she was setting down this first result of her instinct's warning against the danger signal she had seen in Hiram Ranger's manner, he was delivering a bombshell. He had led in the family prayers as usual and had just laid the Bible on the center-table in the back parlor after they rose from their knees. With his hands resting on the cover of the huge volume he looked at his son. There was a sacrificial expression in his eyes. "I have decided to withdraw Arthur's allowance," he said, and his voice sounded hollow and distant, as unfamiliar to his own ears as to theirs. "He must earn his own living. If he wants a place at the mills, there's one waiting for him. If he'd rather work at something else, I'll do what I can to get him a job."
Silence; and Hiram left the room.
Adelaide was first to recover sufficiently to speak. "O mother," cried she, "you're not going to allow this!"
To Adelaide's and Arthur's consternation, Ellen replied quietly: "It ain't no use to talk to him. I ain't lived all these years with your father without finding out when he means what he says."
"It's so unjust!" exclaimed Adelaide.
There came into Ellen's face a look she had never seen there before. It made her say: "O mother, I didn't mean that; only, it does seem hard."
Mrs. Ranger thought so, too; but she would have died rather than have made the thought treason by uttering it. She followed her husband upstairs, saying: "You and Arthur can close up, and put out the lights."
Adelaide, almost in tears over her brother's catastrophe, was thrilled with admiration of his silent, courageous bearing. "What are you going to do, Artie?"
This incautious question drew his inward ferment boiling to the surface. "He has me down and I've got to take his medicine," said the young man, teeth together and eyes dark with fury.