“You just bring that I O U to the shop to-mor-mor,” said Evarts to Andrew; then, with a “Good-evening,” he was off. They heard him hail an electric-car passing, and that, although he never took a car, but walked to save the fare. He had been often heard to say that he for one did not support the street railroad.
After he had gone, Ellen turned to her father, and flung a silent white arm slipping from her sleeve loose around his neck, and pulled his head to her shoulder. “Now look here, father,” she said, “you've been through lots to-day, and you'd better go to bed and go to sleep. I don't think mother was waked up—if she had been, she would have been out here.”
“Look here, Ellen, I want to tell you,” Andrew began, pitifully. He was catching his breath like a child with sobs.
“I don't want to hear anything,” replied Ellen, firmly. “Whatever you did was right, father.”
“I ought to tell you, Ellen!”
“You ought to tell me nothing,” said Ellen. “You are all tired out, father. You can't do anything that isn't right for me. Now go to bed and go to sleep.”
Ellen stroked her father's thin gray hair with exactly the same tender touch with which he had so often stroked her golden locks. It was an inheritance of love reverting to its original source. She kissed him on his lined forehead with her flower-like lips, then she pushed him gently away. “Go softly, and don't wake mother,” whispered she; “and, father, there's no need to trouble her with this. Good-night.”
Chapter XXXIV
Ellen's deepest emotion was pity for her father, so intense that it was actual physical pain.
“Poor father! Poor father! He had to borrow the money to buy me my watch and chain,” she kept repeating to herself. “Poor father!”