“I don’t know. Lottie is so against him.”
“He was very kind when you were all sick.”
“Well, you ought to know better than Lottie; you’ve seen him so much more.” Ellen was silent, and her mother advanced cautiously, “I suppose he is very cultivated.”
“How can I tell? I’m not.”
“Why, Ellen, I think you are. Very few girls have read so much.”
“Yes, but he wouldn’t care if I were cultivated, Ha is like all the rest. He would like to joke and laugh. Well, I think that is nice, too, and I wish I could do it. But I never could, and now I can’t try. I suppose he wonders what makes me such a dead weight on you all.”
“You know you’re not that, Ellen! You musn’t let yourself be morbid. It hurts me to have you say such things.”
“Well, I should like to tell him why, and see what he would say.”
“Ellen!”
“Why not? If he is a minister he must have thought about all kinds of things. Do you suppose he ever knew of a girl before who had been through what I have? Yes, I would like to know what he would really say.”