Finally she untied the cord and took out the jeweller’s case from the wrapping-paper.  “My, you’ve got one too, I bet!” whispered Floretta.  Ellen opened the box, and gazed at her watch and chain; then she glanced at her father and mother down in the audience, and the three loving souls seemed to meet in an ineffable solitude in the midst of the crowd.  All three faces were pale—­Ellen’s began to quiver.  She felt Floretta’s shoulder warm through her thin sleeve against hers.

“My! you’ve got one—­I said so,” she whispered.  “It isn’t chased as much as mine, but it’s real handsome.  My, Ellen Brewster, you ain’t going to cry before all these people!”

Ellen smiled against a sob, and she gave her head a defiant toss.  Down in the audience Fanny had her handkerchief to her eyes, and Andrew sat looking sternly at the speaker.  Ellen said to herself that she would not cry—­she would not, but she sat gazing down at her flower-laden lap and the presents.  The golden disk under her fixed eyes waxed larger and larger, until it seemed to fill her whole comprehension as with a golden light of a suffering, self-denying love which was her best reward of life and labor on the earth.

Chapter XVIII

After the exhibition there was a dance.  The Brewsters, even Mrs. Zelotes, remained to see the last of Ellen’s triumph.  Mrs. Zelotes was firmly convinced that Ellen’s appearance excelled any one’s in the hall.  Not a girl swung past them in the dance but she eyed her white dress scornfully, then her rosy face, and sniffed with high nostrils like an old war-horse.  “Jest look at that Vining girl’s dress, coarse enough to strain through,” she said to Fanny, leaning across Andrew, who was sitting rapt, his very soul dancing with his daughter, his eyes never leaving her one second, following her fair head and white flutter of muslin ruffles and ribbons around the hall.

“Yes, that’s so,” assented Fanny, but not with her usual sharpness.  A wistful softness and sweetness was on her coarsely handsome face.  Once she reached her hand over Andrew’s and pressed it, and blushed crimson as she did so.  Andrew turned and smiled at her.  All that annoyed Andrew was that Ellen danced with Granville Joy often, and also with other boys.  It disturbed him a little, even while it delighted him, that she should dance at all, that she should have learned to dance.  Andrew had been brought up to look upon dancing as an amusement for Louds rather than for Brewsters.  It had not been in vogue among the aristocracy of this little New England city when he was young.

Mrs. Zelotes watched Ellen dance with inward delight and outward disapproval.  “I don’t approve of dancing, never did,” she said to Andrew, but she was furious once when Ellen sat through a dance.  Towards the end of the evening she saw with sudden alertness Ellen dancing with a new partner, a handsome young man, who carried himself with more assurance than the school-boys.  Mrs. Zelotes hit Andrew with her sharp elbow.