“Where do you s’pose she got them?” whispered one neighbor to another.

“I can’t imagine; that’s a beautiful doll.”

“Ain’t it?  It must have cost a lot.  I know, because my Hattie had one her aunt gave her last Christmas; that one cost a dollar and ninety-eight cents, and it didn’t begin to compare with this.  That’s a handsome cup and saucer, too.”

“Yes, but you can get real handsome cups and saucers to Crosby’s for twenty-five cents.  I don’t think so much of that.”

“Them pinks must have come from a greenhouse.”

“Yes, they must.”

“Well, there’s lots of greenhouses in the city besides the florists.  That don’t help much.”  Then the first woman inclined her lips closely to the other woman’s ear and whispered, causing the other to start back.  “No, I can’t believe she would,” said she.

“She came from those Louds on her mother’s side,” whispered the first woman, guardedly, with dark emphasis.

“Ellen,” said Fanny, suddenly, and almost sharply, “you didn’t take those things in any way you hadn’t ought to, did you?  Tell mother.”

“Fanny!” cried Andrew.

“If she did, it’s the first time a Brewster ever stole,” said Mrs. Zelotes.  Her face was no longer strange with unwonted sweetness as she looked at Fanny.

Andrew put his face down to Ellen’s again.  “Father knows she didn’t steal the things; never mind,” he whispered.

Suddenly the stout woman made a soft, ponderous rush out of the room and the house.  She passed the window with oscillating swiftness.

“Where’s Miss Wetherhed gone?” said one woman to another.

“She’s thought of somethin’.”

“Maybe she left her bread in the oven.”

“No, she’s thought of somethin’.”

A very old lady, who had been sitting in a rocking-chair on the other side of the room, rose trembling and came to Ellen and leaned over her, looking at her with small, black, bright eyes through gold-rimmed spectacles.  The old woman was deaf, and her voice was shrill and high-pitched to reach her own consciousness.  “What did such a good little girl as you be run away from father and mother for?” she piped, going back to first principles and the root of the whole matter, since she had heard nothing of the discussion which had been going on about her, and had supposed it to deal with them.

Ellen gasped.  Suddenly all her first woe returned upon her recollection.  She turned innocent, accusing eyes upon her father’s loving face, then her mother’s and aunt’s.  “You said—­you said—­you—­” she stammered out, but then her father and mother were both down upon their knees before her in her chair embracing her, and Eva, too, seized her little hands.  “You mustn’t ever think of what you heard father and mother say, Ellen,” Andrew said, solemnly.  “You must forget all about it.  Father and mother were both very wrong and wicked—­”

“And Aunt Eva, too,” sobbed Eva.