“And Aunt Eva, too,” sobbed Eva.
“And they didn't mean what they said,” continued Andrew. “You are the greatest blessing in this whole world to father and mother; you're all they have got. You don't know what father and mother have been through, thinking you were lost and they might never see their little girl again. Now you mustn't ever think of what they said again.”
“And you won't ever hear them say it again, Ellen,” Fanny Brewster said, with a noble humbling of herself before her child.
“No, you won't,” said Eva.
“Mother is goin' to try to do better, and have more patience, and not let you hear such talk any more,” said Fanny, kissing Ellen passionately, and rising with Andrew's arm around her.
“I'm going to try, too, Ellen,” said Eva.
The stout woman came padding softly and heavily into the room, and there was a bright-blue silken gleam in her hand. She waved a whole yard of silk of the most brilliant blue before Ellen's dazzled eyes. “There!” said she, triumphantly, “if you will tell Aunty Wetherhed where you've been, and all about it, she'll give you all this beautiful silk to make a new dress for your new dolly.”
Ellen looked in the woman's face, she looked at the blue silk, and she looked at the doll, but she was silent.
“Only think what a beautiful dress it will make!” said a woman.
“And see how pretty it goes with the dolly's light hair,” said Fanny.