“Abby,” replied Ellen.
“So you went over there?”
Ellen sat down on a lower step in front of her father. “Yes,” said she. She half laughed up in his face, like a child who knows she has been naughty, yet knows she will not be blamed since she can count so surely on the indulgent love of the would-be blamer.
“Ellen, your mother didn't like it.”
“They had said so many things to me about him that I didn't feel as if I could see him, father,” she said.
Andrew put a hand on her head. “I know what you mean,” he replied, “but they didn't mean any harm; they're only looking out for your best good, Ellen. You can't always have us; it ain't in the course of nature, you know, Ellen.”
There was a tone of inexorable sadness, the sadness of fate itself in Andrew's voice. He had, as he spoke, the full realization of that stage of progress which is simply for the next, which passes to make room for it. He felt his own nothingness. It was the throe of the present before the future; it was the pang of anticipatory annihilation.
“Don't talk that way, father,” said Ellen. “Neither you nor mother are old people.”
“Oh, well, it's all right, don't you worry,” said Andrew.
“How long did he stay?” asked Ellen. She did not look at her father as she spoke.