“Ellen, your mother didn’t like it.”

“They had said so many things to me about him that I didn’t feel as if I could see him, father,” she said.

Andrew put a hand on her head.  “I know what you mean,” he replied, “but they didn’t mean any harm; they’re only looking out for your best good, Ellen.  You can’t always have us; it ain’t in the course of nature, you know, Ellen.”

There was a tone of inexorable sadness, the sadness of fate itself in Andrew’s voice.  He had, as he spoke, the full realization of that stage of progress which is simply for the next, which passes to make room for it.  He felt his own nothingness.  It was the throe of the present before the future; it was the pang of anticipatory annihilation.

“Don’t talk that way, father,” said Ellen.  “Neither you nor mother are old people.”

“Oh, well, it’s all right, don’t you worry,” said Andrew.

“How long did he stay?” asked Ellen.  She did not look at her father as she spoke.

“Oh, he didn’t stay at all, after they found out you had gone.”

Ellen sighed.  After a second Andrew sighed also.  “It’s gettin’ late,” said he, heavily; “mebbe we’d better go in before your mother comes, Ellen.  Mebbe you’ll get cold out here.”

“Oh no, I shall not,” said Ellen, “and I want to hear about poor Aunt Eva.  I don’t see what she is going to do.”

“It’s a dreadful thing makin’ a mistake in marriage,” said Andrew.

“Uncle Jim was a good man if he hadn’t had such a hard time.”

Andrew looked at her, then he spoke impressively.  “Look here, Ellen,” he said, “you are a good scholar, and you are smarter in a good many ways than father has ever been, but there’s one thing you want to remember; you want to be sure before you blame the Lord or other men for a man’s goin’ wrong, if it ain’t his own fault at the bottom of things.”

“There’s mother,” cried Ellen; “there’s mother and Amabel.  Where’s Aunt Eva?  Oh, father, what do you suppose has happened?  Why do you suppose mother is bringing Amabel home?”

“I don’t know,” replied Andrew, in a troubled voice.

He and Ellen rose and hastened forward to meet Fanny and Amabel.  The child hung at her aunt’s hand in a curious, limp, disjointed fashion; her little face, even in the half light, showed ghastly.  When she saw Ellen she let go of Fanny’s hand and ran to her and threw both her little arms around her in a fierce clutch as of terror, then she began to sob wildly, “Mamma, mamma, mamma!”

Fanny leaned her drawn face forward, and whispered to Andrew and Ellen over Amabel’s head, under cover of her sobs, “Hush, don’t say anything.  She’s gone mad, and, and—­she tried to—­kill Amabel.”

Chapter XXXII

Amabel was a very nervous child, and she was in such terror from her really terrific experience that she threatened to go into convulsions.  Andrew went over for his mother, whom he had always regarded as an incontestable authority about children.  She, after one sharp splutter of wrath at the whole situation, went to work with the resolution of an old soldier.