Ellen looked up at him, a vague impression growing stronger. She believed that he would like to be here; that he belonged here, rather than with people like Grandfather and Amos.
"Would you like to live here, Father?"
"Would you, Ellen?"
"Oh, yes!"
She answered still more ardently that night. After their supper they went to a huge lighted building, where it seemed all the ladies had gathered from the fine houses. There were also many gentlemen with such an expanse of shirt-bosom as she had never seen. Here was something to tell Mrs. Sassaman—what would she say to such ironing as that?
"What is going to happen?" she asked in a whisper when they had been taken to seats in the first row of the balcony. Merely to sit there would have been entertainment enough, but it was clear that some additional joy was at hand.
"Wait!" said her father.
She watched the rising curtain; she saw standing on a platform a slender young man with a violin in his hand. Now violins were wicked—Millie's brother, who had long since vanished, was said to have brought one from the city and his father was said to have broken it over the corner of the stove.
Then she took her father's hand. The violinist moved his arm lightly and her blood raced through her veins. Her mind filled with pleasing images, detached from one another, leading nowhere, dreamlike, heavenly. She had never seen dancing, but she felt an impulse to rise and discover whether she was really light as air, whether she could really fly.
"Oh, Father!" she cried, when the dancing tune was over.