The Wide, Wide World

by Susan Warner

"I wonder how many times one may be adopted," thought Ellen that evening; "but, to be sure, my father and my mother have quite given me up here that makes a difference; they had a right to give me away if they pleased. I suppose I do belong to my uncle and grandmother in good earnest, and I cannot help myself. Well, but Mr. Humphreys seems a great deal more like my father than my uncle Lindsay. I cannot help that, but how they would be vexed if they knew it?"

That was profoundly true.

Ellen was in a few days the dear pet and darling of the whole household, without exception, and almost without limit. At first, for a day or two, there was a little lurking doubt, a little anxiety, a constant watch, on the part of all her friends, whether they were not going to find something in their newly acquired treasure to disappoint them; whether it could be that there was nothing behind to belie the first promise. Less keen observers, however, could not have failed to see very soon that there was no disappointment to be looked for: Ellen was just what she seemed, without the shadow of a cloak in anything. Doubts vanished, and Ellen had not been three days in the house when she was taken home to two hearts, at least, in unbounded love and tenderness. When Mr. Lindsay was present, he was not satisfied without having Ellen in his arms, or close beside him; and if not there, she was at the side of her grandmother.

There was nothing, however, in the character of this fondness, great as it was, that would have inclined any child to presume upon it. Ellen was least of all likely to try; but if her will, by any chance, had run counter to theirs, she would have found it impossible to maintain her ground. She understood this from the first with her grandmother; and in one or two trifles since had been more and more confirmed in the feeling that they would do with her, and make of her precisely what they pleased, without the smallest regard to her fancy. If it jumped with theirs, very well; if not, it must yield. In one matter, Ellen had been roused to plead very hard, and even with tears, to have her wish, which she verily thought she ought to have had. Mrs. Lindsay smiled and kissed her, and went on with the utmost coolness in what she was doing, which she carried through without in the least regarding Ellen's distress, or showing the slightest discomposure, and the same thing was repeated every day till Ellen got used to it. Her uncle she had never seen tried, but she knew it would be the same with him. When Mr. Lindsay clasped her to his bosom, Ellen felt it was as his own; his eye always seemed to repeat, "my own little daughter;" and in his whole manner, love was mingled with as much authority. Perhaps Ellen did not like them much the worse for this, as she had no sort of disposition to displease them in anything; but it gave rise to sundry thoughts, however, which she kept to herself thoughts that went both to the future and the past.

Lady Keith, it may be, had less heart to give than her mother and brother, but pride took up the matter instead; and according to her measure, Ellen held with her the same place she held with Mr. and Mrs. Lindsay, being the great delight and darling of all three, and with all three seemingly the great object in life.

A few days after her arrival, a week or more, she underwent one evening a kind of catechizing from her aunt, as to her former manner of life; where she had been, and with whom, since her mother left her; what she had been doing; whether she had been to school, and how her time was spent at home, &c. &c. No comments whatever were made on her answers, but a something in her aunt's face and manner induced Ellen to make her replies as brief, and to give her as little information in them as she could. She did not feel inclined to enlarge upon anything, or to go at all further than the questions obliged her; and Lady Keith ended without having more than a very general notion of Ellen's way of life for three or four years past. This conversation was repeated to her grandmother and uncle.

"To think," said the latter the next morning at breakfast, "to think that the backwoods of America should have turned us out such a little specimen of "

"Of what, uncle?" said Ellen, laughing.

"Ah, I shall not tell you that," said he.

"But it is extraordinary," said Lady Keith, "how after living among a parcel of thick-headed, and thicker-tongued Yankees, she could come out and speak pure English in a clear voice; it is an enigma to me."