“If you have come to see Ellen, why don’t you speak to her?” demanded Amabel, suddenly.  Then both Robert and Ellen laughed.

“This is your aunt’s little girl, isn’t she?” asked Robert.

Amabel answered before Ellen was able.  “My mamma is sick, and they carried her away to the asylum,” she told Robert.  “She—­she tried to hurt Amabel; she tried to”—­Amabel made that hideous gesture with her tiny forefinger across her throat.  “Mamma was sick or she wouldn’t,” she added, challengingly, to Robert.

“Of course she wouldn’t, you poor little soul,” said Robert.

Suddenly Amabel burst into tears, and began to wriggle herself free from his arms.  “Let me go,” she demanded; “let me go.  I want Ellen.”

When Robert loosened his grasp she fled to Ellen, and was in her lap with a bound.

“I want my mamma—­I want my mamma,” she moaned.

Ellen leaned her cheek against the poor little flaxen head.  “There, there, darling,” she whispered, “don’t.  Mamma will come home as soon as she gets better.”

“How long will that be, Ellen?”

“Pretty soon, I hope, darling.  Don’t.”

Poor Eva Tenny had been in the asylum some four months, and the reports as to her condition were no more favorable.  Ellen’s voice, in spite of herself, had a hopeless tone, which the child was quick to detect.

“I want my mamma,” she repeated.  “I want her, Ellen.  It has been to-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow after that, and the to-morrows are yesterdays, and she hasn’t come.”

“She will come some time, darling.”

Robert sat eying the two with intensest pity.  “Do you like chocolates, Amabel?” he asked.

The child repeated that she wanted her mother still, as with a sort of mechanical regularity of grief, but she fastened her eyes on him.

“Because I am going to send you a big box of them to-morrow,” said Robert.

Amabel turned to Ellen.  “Does he mean it?” she asked.

“I guess so,” replied Ellen, laughing.

Amabel, looking from one to the other, also began to laugh unwillingly.

Then the sitting-room door opened, and Fanny called sharply and imperatively, “Amabel, Amabel; come!”

Amabel clung more tightly to Ellen, who began to gently loosen her arms.

“Amabel Tenny, come this minute.  It is your bed-time,” said Fanny.

“I guess you had better go, darling,” whispered Ellen.

“I don’t want to go to bed till you do, Ellen,” whispered the child.

Ellen gently but firmly unclasped the clinging arms.  “Run along, dear,” she whispered.

“I will send those chocolates to-morrow,” suggested Robert.

Amabel seemed to do everything by sudden and violent impulses.  All at once she ceased resisting.  She slid down from Ellen’s lap as quickly as she had gotten into it.  She clutched her neck with two little wiry arms, kissed her hard on the mouth, darted across the room to Robert, threw her arms around his neck and kissed him, then flew out of the room.