“Well, Sarah, if you spent more time down at Emily’s, perhaps you’d know.”
To Miss Sarah’s hot, “What do you mean?”—
“I mean that wherever Ellen is, Roger’s apt to be, and no reason making such big eyes at me; a very nice sort of thing, I think it.”
Miss Sarah merely put on her bonnet and shawl and marched majestically down the hill. She found Ellen on the back porch, in the midst of a foam of ruffles she was hemming for her mother’s gown. She towered above Ellen, an avenging fate, whose gray curls bobbed on each side of her head.
“Ellen, what’s this gossip I hear about you and Roger?” she demanded. Before Ellen had time to reply, as though she read her confession in the color that mounted to her face, “How could you do such a thing, Ellen?” she fumed. “Don’t you know that Roger Byington came here to work and settle down; don’t you know that he has a marriage already planned? Don’t you see the position you’ve put your family in, that of snatching at the fortune of an old friend! A fortune that’s destined elsewhere, and that we were bound, you as well as I, to guard! You’ve been deceiving the whole of us!”
Ellen rose to her feet and faced her, her sewing still in her hands, the blue ruffles around her white frock like a wave of the sea.
“I’ve deceived no one, Aunt Sarah,” said she, with a touch of sternness in her voice, and just here Roger appeared.
He had heard voices, and had heard his and Ellen’s names mentioned, and he had then seen Miss Grant storming down the hill like some aged New England Valkyrie and had followed her. He arrived in time around the side of the house to catch her last words, and the flaming anger that any one should scold his Ellen blew away forever the flatness that had for a moment assailed them.
He threw his arms around Ellen as though he would protect her from everything for all time. “Miss Grant,” he said, “the reason I’m here in this town is Ellen. I walked through here one time and I saw Ellen and talked with her for a few minutes by the roadside, and so I came back. No one else I’ve ever seen in life matters to me—nothing else but Ellen matters. Please remember that if I amount to anything ever, it will be because of Ellen, and if I fail, it will be because I have failed Ellen. Had I had my way Ellen would not have been here now with you; she’d be married to me.”