Ellen looked at her father a moment longer with an adorable look, which Robert saw with a sidewise glance of his downcast eyes, then at her mother. Then she slid from her father's knee and crossed the room and stood before Cynthia. “I don't know how to thank you enough,” she said, “but I thank you very much, and not only for myself but for them”; she made a slight, graceful, backward motion of her shoulder towards her parents. “I will study hard and try to do you credit,” said she. There was something about Ellen's direct, childlike way of looking at her, and her clear speech, which brought back to Cynthia the little girl of so many years ago. A warm flush came over her delicate cheeks; her eyes grew bright with tenderness.
“I have no doubt as to your doing your best, my dear,” she said, “and it gives me great pleasure to do this for you.”
With that, said with a graceful softness which was charming, she made as if to rise, but Ellen still stood before her. She had something more to say. “If ever I am able,” she said—“and I shall be able some day if I have my health—I will repay you.” Ellen spoke with the greatest sweetness, yet with an inflexibility of pride evident in her face. Cynthia smiled. “Very well,” she said, “if you feel better to leave it in that way. If ever you are able you shall repay me; in the mean time I consider that I am amply paid in the pleasure it gives me to do it.” Cynthia held out her slender hand to Ellen, who took it gratefully, yet a little constrainedly.
In the opposite corner the doll sat staring at them with eyes of blank blue and her vacuous smile. A vague sense of injury was over Ellen, in spite of her delight and her gratitude—a sense of injury which she could not fathom, and for which she chided herself. However, Andrew felt it also.
After this surprising benefactress and Robert had gone, after repeated courtesies and assurances of obligation on both sides, Andrew turned to Fanny. “What does she do it for?” he asked.
“Hush; she'll hear you.”
“I can't help it. What does she do it for? Ellen isn't anything to her.”
Fanny looked at him with a meaning smile and nod which made her tear-stained face fairly grotesque.
“What do you mean lookin' that way?” demanded Andrew.