“Fanny!” cried Andrew.
“If she did, it's the first time a Brewster ever stole,” said Mrs. Zelotes. Her face was no longer strange with unwonted sweetness as she looked at Fanny.
Andrew put his face down to Ellen's again. “Father knows she didn't steal the things; never mind,” he whispered.
Suddenly the stout woman made a soft, ponderous rush out of the room and the house. She passed the window with oscillating swiftness.
“Where's Miss Wetherhed gone?” said one woman to another.
“She's thought of somethin'.”
“Maybe she left her bread in the oven.”
“No, she's thought of somethin'.”
A very old lady, who had been sitting in a rocking-chair on the other side of the room, rose trembling and came to Ellen and leaned over her, looking at her with small, black, bright eyes through gold-rimmed spectacles. The old woman was deaf, and her voice was shrill and high-pitched to reach her own consciousness. “What did such a good little girl as you be run away from father and mother for?” she piped, going back to first principles and the root of the whole matter, since she had heard nothing of the discussion which had been going on about her, and had supposed it to deal with them.
Ellen gasped. Suddenly all her first woe returned upon her recollection. She turned innocent, accusing eyes upon her father's loving face, then her mother's and aunt's. “You said—you said—you—” she stammered out, but then her father and mother were both down upon their knees before her in her chair embracing her, and Eva, too, seized her little hands. “You mustn't ever think of what you heard father and mother say, Ellen,” Andrew said, solemnly. “You must forget all about it. Father and mother were both very wrong and wicked—”