"Who wanted to kiss you?"
"That man out there."
"What man?"
"The man that drives the oxen."
"What, Mr. Van Brunt?" And Ellen never forgot the loud ha! ha! which burst from Miss Fortune's wide-open mouth.
"Well, why didn't you let him kiss you?"
The laugh, the look, the tone, stung Ellen to the very quick. In a fury of passion she dashed away out of the kitchen, and up to her own room. And there, for a while, the storm of anger drove over her with such violence, that conscience had hardly time to whisper. Sorrow came in again as passion faded, and gentler but very bitter weeping took the place of compulsive sobs of rage and mortification, and then the whispers of conscience began to be heard a little. "Oh, Mamma! Mamma!" cried poor Ellen, in her heart, "how miserable I am without you! I never can like Aunt Fortune it's of no use I never can like her; I hope I shan't get to hate her! and that isn't right. I am forgetting all that is good, and there's nobody to put me in mind. Oh, Mamma! if I could lay my head in your lap for a minute!" Then came thoughts of her Bible and hymn-book, and the friend who had given it; sorrowful thoughts they were; and at last, humbled and sad, poor Ellen sought that great friend she knew she had displeased, and prayed earnestly to be made a good child; she felt and owned she was not one now.
It was long after mid-day when Ellen rose from her knees. Her passion was all gone; she felt more gentle and pleasant than she had done for days; but at the bottom of her heart resentment was not all gone. She still thought she had cause to be angry, and she could not think of her aunt's look and tone without a thrill of painful feeling. In a very different mood, however, from that in which she had flown up stairs two or three hours before, she now came softly down, and went out by the front door to avoid meeting her aunt. She had visited that morning a little brook, which ran through the meadow on the other side of the road. It had great charms for her; and now, crossing the lane and creeping under the fence, she made her way again to its banks. At a particular spot, where the brook made one of its sudden turns, Ellen sat down upon the grass, and watched the dark water whirling, brawling over the stones, hurrying past her, with ever the same soft, pleasant sound and she was never tired of it. She did not hear footsteps drawing near, and it was not till some one was close beside her, and a voice spoke almost in her ears, that she raised her startled eyes and saw the little girl who had come the evening before for a pitcher of milk.
"What are you doing?" said the latter.
"I'm watching for fish," said Ellen.