“Yes,” he replied. He nodded towards Cynthia, who was sitting on the opposite side from the Brewsters, with the Norman Lloyds and Lyman Risley. “She used to be like a mother to me,” he said. “You know I lost my mother when I was a baby.”
Ellen nodded at him with a look of pity of that marvellous scope which only a woman in whom the maternal slumbers ready to awake can compass. Ellen, looking at the handsome face of the young man, saw quite distinctly in it the face of the little motherless child, and all the tender pity which she would have felt for that child was in her eyes.
“What a beautiful girl she is,” thought the young man. He smiled at her admiringly, loving her look at him, while not in the least understanding it. He had asked to be presented to Ellen from curiosity. He had not been at the exhibition, and had heard the school-master and Risley talking about the valedictory. “I didn't know that you taught anarchy in school, Mr. Harris,” Risley had said. He laughed as he said it, but Harris had colored with an uneasy look at Norman Lloyd, whose face wore an expression of amusement. “Perhaps I should have,” he began, but Lloyd interrupted him. “My dear fellow,” he said, “you don't imagine that any man in his senses could take seriously enough to be annoyed by it that child's effusion on her nice little roll of foolscap tied with her pretty white satin ribbon?”
“She is just as sweet as she can be,” said Mrs. Norman, “and I thought her composition was real pretty. Didn't you, Cynthia?”
“Very,” replied Cynthia.
“What your are worrying about it for, Edward, I don't see,” said Mrs. Norman to the school-master.
“Well, I am glad if it struck you that way,” said he, “but when I heard the applause from all those factory people”—he lowered his voice, since a number were sitting near—“I didn't know, but—” He hesitated.
“That the spark that would fire the mine might be in that pretty little beribboned roll of foolscap,” said Risley, laughing. “Well, it was a very creditable production, and it was written with the energy of conviction. The Czar and that little school-girl would not live long in one country, if she goes on as she has begun.”
It was then that young Lloyd, who had just come in, and was standing beside the school-master, turned eagerly to him, and asked who the girl was, and begged him to present him.
“Perhaps he'll fall in love with her,” said Mrs. Norman, directly, when the two men had gone across the hall in quest of Ellen. Her husband laughed.