"There is no evil without some good," Alice went on. "Except for my headache, John would not have held my head by the hour as he did; and you couldn't have given me the pleasure you did, Ellie. Oh, Jack! there has been many a day lately when I would gladly have had a headache for the power of laying my head on your shoulder!"
"And if Mamma had not gone away, I should never have known you," said Ellen. "I wish she never had gone, but I am very, very glad for this!"
She had kneeled upon the window-seat and clasped Alice round the neck, just as they were called to tea. The conversation had banished every disagreeable feeling from Ellen's mind. She met her companions in the drawing-room, almost forgetting that she had any cause of complaint against them. And this appeared when in the course of the evening it came in her way to perform some little office of politeness for Marianne. It was done with the gracefulness that could only come from a spirit entirely free from ungrateful feelings. The children felt it, and for the time were shamed into better behaviour. The evening passed pleasantly, and Ellen went to bed very happy.
CHAPTER XXXI.
Flowers and Thorns.
The next day it happened that the young people were amusing themselves with talking in a room where John Humphreys, walking up and down, was amusing himself with thinking. In the course of his walk, he began to find their amusement rather disturbing to his. The children were all grouped closely around Margaret Dunscombe, who was entertaining them with a long and very detailed account of a wedding and great party at Randolph, which she had had the happiness of attending. Eagerly fighting her battles over again, and pleased with the rapt attention of her hearers, the speaker forgot herself, and raised her voice much more than she meant to do. As every turn of his walk brought John near, there came to his ears sufficient bits and scraps of Margaret's story to give him a very fair sample of the whole; and he was sorry to see Ellen among the rest, and as the rest, hanging upon her lips and drinking in what seemed to him to be very poor nonsense. "Her gown was all blue satin, trimmed here and so you know, with the most exquisite lace, as deep as that and on the shoulders and here, you know, it was looped up with the most lovely bunches of" here John lost the sense. When he came near again, she had got upon a different topic " 'Miss Simmons,' says I, 'what did you do that for?' 'Why,' says she, 'how could I help it? I saw Mr. Payne coming, and I thought I'd get behind you, and so' " . The next time the speaker was saying with great animation, "And lo and behold, when I was in the midst of all my pleasure, up comes a little gentleman of about his dimensions ." He had not taken many turns, when he saw that Margaret's nonsense was branching out right and left into worse than nonsense.
"Ellen!" said he, suddenly "I want you in the library."
"My conscience!" said Margaret, as he left the room "King
John the second, and no less."
"Don't go on till I come back," said Ellen; "I won't be three minutes; just wait for me."
She found John seated at one of the tables in the library, sharpening a pencil.