Pray You, Sir, Whose Daughter?

by Helen H. Gardener

At last this changed too, for Francis was obliged to remain to see that the stock of her department was properly put away. At first Ettie waited for her, but later on she had fallen into the habit of going with a child nearer her own age, a little cash girl. Ettie was barely fourteen, and her new friend a year or two younger. At last Francis King found that the motherless child had invited her new friends home with her, and had gone with them to their homes.

As spring came on, Ettie went one Sunday to Coney Island, and did not tell Francis until afterward. She said that she had had a lovely time, hut she appeared rather disinclined to talk about it. At the Guild one Wednesday evening, after the class began again in the fall, Francis King told Gertrude this, and asked her advice. She said: "It's none o' my business, and she don't like me much any more, but I thought maybe I had ought to tell you, for—for—since I been in the store, I've learnt a good deal about—about things; an' Ettie she don't seem to learn much of anything."

"Is Ettie still living at her cousin's?" asked Gertrude.

"Yes," said Francis, scornfully, "but she 'bout as well be livin' by herself. Her cousin's always just gaddin' 'round tryin' t' get married. I never did see such an awful fool. Before Et's pa went to the Legislature, we all did think he was goin' t' marry her, but now—"

"Legislative honors have turned his head, have they?" smiled Gertrude, intent on her own thoughts in another direction. She was not, therefore, prepared for the sudden fling of temper in the strange girl beside her. "Yes, it has; 'n if it don't turn some other way before long, I'll break his neck for him. I ain't marryin' a widower if I do like Ettie."

In spite of herself, Gertrude started a little. She looked at Francis quite steadily for a moment, and then said: "Could you and Ettie come to my house and spend the day next Sunday? I'm glad you told me of Ettie's—of—about the change in her manner toward you."

"Don't let on that I told you anything," said Francis, as they parted.

Since they had been in the store they had not gone regularly to the weekly evening Guild meetings, and Gertrude had seen less of them. She was surprised, however, on the following Sunday, to see the strange, mysterious change in Ettie. A part of her frank, open, childish manner was gone, and yet nothing more mature had taken its place. There would be flashes of her usual manner, but long silences, quite foreign to the child, would follow. At the dinner table she grew deadly ill, and had to be taken up stairs. Gertrude tucked a soft cover about her on the couch in her own room, and gave her smelling salts and a trifle of wine. The child drank the wine but began to cry.

"Oh, don't cry, Ettie," said Gertrude, stroking her hair gently. "You'll be over it in a little while. I think our dining-room is much warmer than yours, and it was very hot to-day. Then your trying to eat the olives when you don't like them, might easily make you sick. You'll be all right after a little I'm sure. Don't cry."

"That's the same kind of wine I had that day at Coney Island," she said, and Gertrude thought how irrelevant the remark was, and how purely of physical origin were the tears of such a child.