And the next minute father makes two long steps to the door, and his arms is round her, and she a-hanging on his neck, and they two holding each other as if they would never let go. And so she come home, and I shut the door.
And in all that time father and me, we couldn't make too much of her, me being that thankful to the Lord that He had let our dear come back to us; and never a word did she say to me of him that had been her ruin. But one night when I asked her, silly-like, and hardly thinking what I was doing, some question about him, father down with his fist on the table, and says he—
'When you name that name, my girl, you light hell in me, and if ever I see his damned face again, God help him and me too.'
And so I held my stupid tongue, and sat sewing with Ellen long days, and it was a happy, sad time, if a time can be sad and happy both.
And it was about primrose-time that her time come, and we had kept it quiet, and nobody knew but us and Mrs. Jarvis, that lived in the cottage next to ours, and was Ellen's godmother, and loved her like her own daughter; and when the baby come, Ellen says, 'Is it a boy or a girl?' And we told her it was a boy.
Then, says she, 'Thank God for that! My baby won't live to know such shame as mine.'
And there wasn't one of us dared tell her that God meant no shame or pain or grief at all should come to her little baby, because it was dead. But by-and-by she would have it to lie by her, and we said No: it was asleep; and for all we said she guessed the truth somehow. And she began to cry, the tears running down her cheeks and wetting the linen about her, and she began to moan, 'I want my baby—oh, bring me my little baby that I have never seen yet. I want to say "good-bye" to it, for I shall never go where it is going.'
And father said, 'Bring her the child.'
I had dressed the poor little thing—a pretty boy, and would have been a fine man—in one of the gowns I had taken a pleasure in sewing for it to wear, and the little cap with the crimped border that had been Ellen's own when she was a baby and her mother's pride, and I brought it and put it in her arms, and it was clay-cold in my hands as I carried it. And she laid its head on her breast as well as she could for her weakness; and father, who was leaning over her, nigh mad with love and being so anxious about her, he says—
'Let Lucy take the poor little thing away, Ellen,' he says, 'for you must try to get well and strong for the sake of those that love you.'