her brain nor gone farther than her bounding pulses of youth.  “Ellen is getting real fond of dress,” Fanny often said to Andrew.  He only laughed at that.  “Well, pretty birds like pretty feathers, and no wonder,” said he.  But he did not laugh when Fanny added that Ellen seemed to think more about the boys than she used to.  There was scarcely a boy in the high-school who was not Ellen’s admirer.  It was a curious happening in those days when Ellen was herself in much less degree the stuff of which dreams are made than she had been and would be thereafter, that she was the object of so many.  Every morning when she entered the school-room she was reflected in a glorious multiple of ideals in no one could tell how many boyish hearts.  Floretta Vining began to imitate her, and kept close to Ellen with supremest diplomacy, that she might thereby catch some of the crumbs of attention which fell from Ellen’s full table.  Often when some happy boy had secured a short monopoly of Ellen, his rival took up with Floretta, and she was content, being one of those purely feminine things who have no pride when the sweets of life are concerned.  Floretta dressed her hair like Ellen’s, and tied her neck-ribbons the same way; she held her head like her, she talked like her, except when the two girls were absolutely alone; then she sometimes relapsed suddenly, to Ellen’s bewilderment, into her own ways, and her blue eyes took on an expression as near animosity as her ingratiating politic nature could admit.

Ellen did not affiliate as much with Floretta as with Maria Atkins.  Abby had gone to work in the shop, and so Ellen did not see so much of her.  Maria was not as much a favorite with the boys as she had been since they had passed and not yet returned to that stage when feminine comradeship satisfies; so Ellen used to confide in her with a surety of sympathy and no contention.  Once, when the girls were sleeping together, Ellen made a stupendous revelation to Maria, having first bound her to inviolable secrecy.  “I love a boy,” said she, holding Maria’s little arm tightly.

“I know who,” said Maria, with a hushed voice.

“He kissed me once, and then I knew it,” said Ellen.

“Well, I guess he loves you,” said Maria.  Ellen shivered and drew a fluttering sigh of assent.  Then the two girls lay in each other’s arms, looking at the moonlight which streamed in through the window.  God knew in what realms of pure romance, and of passion so sublimated by innocence that no tinge of earthliness remained, the two wandered in their dreams.

At last, that afternoon in February, Ellen put down little Amabel and got out her needle-work.  She was making a lace neck-tie for her own adornment.  She showed it to her grandmother at her mother’s command.  “It’s real pretty,” said Mrs. Zelotes.  “Ellen takes after the Brewsters; they were always handy with their needles.”

“Can uncle sew?” asked little Amabel, suddenly, from her corner, in a tone big with wonder.