“He might lose his work after he was married, you know.”

“Well, I suppose we’d have to run the risk of that; but I’m goin’ to start fair or not at all.”

“Well, maybe he’ll get work,” Fanny said.

“He won’t,” said Eva.  She began to sing “Nancy Lee” over Ellen’s dress.

After breakfast Ellen begged a piece of old brown calico of her mother.  “Why, of course you can have it, child,” said her mother; “but what on earth do you want it for?  I was goin’ to put it in the rag-bag.”

“I want to make my dolly a dress.”

“Why, that ain’t fit for your dolly’s dress.  Only think how queer that beautiful doll would look in a dress made of that.  Why, you ’ain’t thought anything but silk and satin was good enough for her.”

“I’ll give you a piece of my new blue silk to make your doll a dress,” said Eva.

But Ellen persisted.  When the doll came out of her closet of vicarious penance she was arrayed like a very scullion among dolls, in the remnant of the dress in which Fanny Brewster had done her house-work all summer.

“There,” Ellen told the doll, when her mother did not hear “you look more like the way you ought to, and you ought to be happy, and not ever think you wish you had your silk dress on.  Think of all the poor children who never have any silk dresses, or any dresses at all—­nothing except their cloth bodies in the coldest weather.  You ought to be thankful to have this.”  For all which good advice and philosophy the little mother of the doll would often look at the discarded beauty of the wardrobe, with tears in her eyes and fondest pity in her heart; but she never flinched.  When the young man Nahum Beals came in, as he often did of an evening, and raised his voice in fierce denunciation against the luxury and extravagance of the rich, Ellen would listen and consider that he would undoubtedly approve of what she had done, did he know, and would allow that she had made her small effort towards righting things.

“Only think what Mr. Beals would say if he saw you in your silk dress; why, I don’t know but he would throw you out of the window,” she told her doll once.

Ellen did not feel any difference in her way of living after her father was out of work.  “She ain’t goin’ to be stented in one single thing; remember that,” Andrew told Fanny, with angry emphasis.  “That little, delicate thing is goin’ to have everything she needs, if I spend every cent I’ve saved and mortgage the place.”

“Oh, you’ll get work before it comes to that,” Fanny said, consolingly.

“Whether I do or not, it sha’n’t make any difference,” declared Andrew.  “I’m goin’ to hire a horse and sleigh and take her sleigh-ridin’ this afternoon.  It’ll be good, and she’s been talkin’ about a sleigh-ride ever since snow flew.”

“She could do without that,” Fanny said, doubtfully.

“Well, she ain’t goin’ to.”