though she did not know it.  Her imitation was totally unconscious; indeed, it was hardly to be called imitation; it was rather the following out of the leading of that image of Cynthia which was always present before her mind.  Ellen saw Cynthia very seldom.  Once or twice she arrayed herself in her best and made a formal call of gratitude, and once Fanny went with her.  Ellen saw the incongruity of her mother in Cynthia’s drawing-room with a torture which she never forgot.  Going home she clung hard to her mother’s arm all the way.  She was fairly fierce with love and loyalty.  She was so indignant with herself that she had seen the incongruity.  “I think our parlor is enough sight prettier than hers,” she said, defiantly, when they reached home and the hideous lamp was lighted.  Ellen looked around the ornate room, and then at her mother, as with a challenge in behalf of loyalty, and of that which underlies externals.

“I rather guess it is,” agreed Fanny, happily, “and I don’t s’pose it cost half so much.  I dare say that mat on her hearth cost as much as all our plush furniture and the carpet, and it is a dreadful dull, homely thing.”

“Yes, it is,” said Ellen.

“I wish I’d been able to keep my hands as white as Miss Lennox’s, an’ I wish I’d had time to speak so soft and slow,” said Fanny, wistfully.  Then Ellen had her by both shoulders, and was actually shaking her with a passion to which she very seldom gave rein.

“Mother,” she cried—­“mother, you know better, you know there is nobody in the whole world to me like my own mother, and never will be.  It isn’t being beautiful, nor speaking in a soft voice, nor dressing well, it’s the being you—­you.  You know I love you best, mother, you know, and I love my own home best, and everything that is my own best, and I always will.”  Ellen was almost weeping.

“You silly child,” said Fanny, tenderly.  “Mother knows you love her best, but she wishes for your sake, and especially since you are going to have advantages that she never had, that she was a little different.”

“I don’t, I don’t,” said Ellen, fiercely.  “I want you just as you are, just exactly as you are, mother.”

Fanny laughed tearfully, and rubbed her coarse black head against Ellen’s lovingly with a curious, cat-like motion, then bade her run away or she would not get her dress done.  A dressmaker was coming for a whole week to the Brewster house to make Ellen’s outfit.  Mrs. Zelotes had furnished most of the materials, and Andrew was to pay the dressmaker.  “You can take a little more of that money out of the bank,” Fanny said.  “I want Ellen to go looking so she won’t be ashamed before the other girls, and I don’t want Cynthia Lennox thinking she ain’t well enough dressed, and we ought to have let her do it.  As for being beholden to her for Ellen’s clothes, I won’t.”