“They seem to fit very nicely, grandma.”
“Sleeves are very particular things; a sleeve wrong can spoil a whole dress.”
Suddenly the old woman turned on Ellen with a look of extremest facetiousness and intelligence, and the girl winced, for she knew what was coming. “I see you goin' past with a young man last night, didn't I?” said she.
Ellen flushed. “Yes,” she said, almost indignantly, for she had a feeling as if the veil of some inner sacredness of her nature were continually being torn aside. “I went over to Miss Lennox, to carry some sweet-peas, and Mr. Robert Lloyd was there, and he came home with me.”
“Oh!” replied her grandmother.
Ellen's patience left her at the sound of that “Oh,” which seemed to rasp her very soul. “You have none of you any right to talk and act as you do,” said she. “You make me ashamed of you, you and mother; father has more sense. Just because a young man makes me a call to return something, and then walks home with me, because he happened to be at the house where I call in the evening! I think it's a shame. You make me feel as if I couldn't look him in the face.”
“Never mind, grandma didn't mean any harm,” Andrew said, soothingly.
“You needn't try to excuse me, Andrew Brewster,” cried his mother, angrily. “I guess it's a pretty to-do, if I can't say a word in joke to my own granddaughter. If it had been a poor, good-for-nothing young feller workin' in a shoe-factory, I s'pose she'd been tickled to death to be joked about him, but now when it begins to look as if somebody that was worth while had come along—”
“Grandma, if you say another word about it, I will never speak to Robert Lloyd again as long as I live,” declared Ellen.
“Never mind, child,” whispered Andrew.