“I am afraid of my mamma, and I want papa!” screamed Amabel, quivering, and stiffening her slender back.
Eva continued to keep her eyes fixed upon her, and to hold out that commanding hand.
Fanny went close to her, seized her by both shoulders, and shook her violently. “Eva Tenny, you behave yourself!” said she. “There ain't no need of your acting this way if your man has run away with another woman, and as for that child goin' with you, she sha'n't go one step with any woman that looks and acts as you do. Actin' this way over a good-for-nothin' fellow like Jim Tenny!”
Again that scourge of the spirit aroused Eva to her normal state. She became a living, breathing, wrathful, loving woman once more. “Don't you dare say a word against Jim!” she cried out; “not one word, Fanny Brewster; I won't hear it. Don't you dare say a word!”
“Don't you say a word against my papa!” shrilled Amabel. Then she left Ellen and ran to her mother, and clung to her. And Eva caught her up, and hugged the little, fragile thing against her breast, and pounced upon her with kisses, with a fury as of rage instead of love.
“She always looked like Jim,” she sobbed out; “she always did. Aggie Bemis shall never get her. I've got her in spite of all the awful wrong of life; it's the good that had to come out of it whether or no, and God couldn't help Himself. I've got this much. She always looked like Jim.”
Eva set Amabel down and began leading her out of the room.
“You ain't goin'?” said Fanny, who had herself begun to weep. “Eva, you ain't goin'? Oh, you poor girl!”
“Don't!—you said that like Jim,” Eva cried, with a great groan of pain.
“Eva, you ain't goin'? Wait a little while, and let me do somethin' for you.”