"Next time I'll be up sooner," she promised sweetly.
Ellen made no answer, having learned at last to hold her tongue. Her body ached and her soul quivered. If Millie had been at all clever, she would have assigned to her some of the care of little Matthew even in addition to her own work, but Millie was not clever.
Late in September Grandfather Milhausen came one Sunday evening to see his great-grandchild. He and a nervous and unwilling Amos walked pilgrimwise along the road and at the entrance to the lane separated, Amos going to the next farmhouse to attend to an errand. Poor Amos was no happier, and the few hours of rest which he took in one of the cells in Saron had made him no stouter. His ability to concentrate his mind upon abstractions seemed to be destroyed, and outside of school hours he had no occupation. Grandfather found Millie in the kitchen with her baby. He laid his hand in blessing upon the little head and his eyes gleamed. Here was an earnest for the future; this child might live to complete the restoration of the Kloster which his elders were to begin.
"And where is Ellen?" he asked with a sigh. Ellen had not yet "come round"; it was now more than three years since she had run away so incontinently from the Saal and she had never returned.
"She went for a walk," explained Millie. "She's a great one to go off alone, and I don't like it. It doesn't look well."
Matthew moved uneasily in his chair. It was natural for Millie to express to him disapproval of Ellen's ways, but he did not like her to complain to others.
"I'm sure that Ellen does no harm."
"I'm sure of that also. But it looks as though she wanted to be away from us. She—"
The opening of the door interrupted Millie's sentence. It was plain to Ellen entering that they had been discussing her—why, otherwise, should they all look so self-conscious? Hearing a sound behind her, she glanced nervously over her shoulder, to find that Amos had come round the other corner of the house and was close at her heels. It had been a day of heavy depression of spirit and of sharp irritability when she had kept silence with difficulty. Her eyes met first of all Millie's, in which she saw a startled and amused curiosity. Amos had with all the brethren a reputation for immaculate behavior, but to Millie no one was immaculate.
"Where have you two been?" she asked gayly. "Walking together?"