"No; but—"
"But what? What is troubling you, Eliza? You're not a girl to cry for nothing. Since you came to us I have seen that you are a straightforward, good girl; and you have plenty of sense, too. Come, tell me how it is you cry like this?"
Eliza sat up. "You won't tell them downstairs?" she said slowly.
"You may trust me not to repeat anything that is not necessary."
Eliza moved nervously, and her movements suggested hopelessness of trouble and difficulty of speech. Sophia pitied her.
"I don't know," she said restlessly, stretching out aimless hands into the darkness, "I don't know why I cry, Miss Sophia. It isn't for one thing more than another; everything is the reason—everything, everything."
"You mean, for one thing, that your father has gone, and you are homesick?"
"You said you wouldn't tell?"
"Yes."
"Well, I'm not sorry about that, because—well, I suppose I liked father as well as he liked me, but as long as he lived I'd have had to stay on the clearin', and I hated that. I'm glad to be here; but, oh! I want so much—I want so much—oh, Miss Sophia, don't you know?"