Ellen nodded.

“Perhaps there’s a picture of somebody on it.”

“I shouldn’t wonder.”

Ellen impatiently kicked a big apple out of her way, to the manifest discomfiture of two or three drunken wasps who were battening on the sweet juices.

“I’ve got to go back to the house,” she said.  “Mother’ll be looking for me.”

“But, Ellen—­”

“Well?”

“You said you knew something—­”

Ellen yawned.

“Did I?”

“You know you did, Ellen!  Please—­”

“’Twasn’t much.”

“What was it?”

“Oh, nothing, only I met the minister coming out of Lydia Orr’s house one day awhile ago, and he was walking along as if he’d been sent for—­ Never even saw me.  I had a good mind to speak to him, anyway; but before I could think of anything cute to say he’d gone by—­two-forty on a plank road!”

Fanny was silent.  She was wishing she had not asked Ellen to tell.  Then instantly her mind began to examine this new aspect of her problem.

“He didn’t look so awfully pleased and happy,” Ellen went on, “his head was down—­so, and he was just scorching up the road.  Perhaps they’d been having a scrap.”

“Oh, no!” burst from Fanny’s lips.  “It wasn’t that.”

“Why, what do you know about Wesley Elliot and Lydia Orr?” inquired Ellen vindictively.  “You’re a whole lot like Jim—­as close-mouthed as a molasses jug, when you don’t happen to feel like talking....  It isn’t fair,” she went on crossly.  “I tell you everything—­every single thing; and you just take it all in without winking an eyelash.  It isn’t fair!”

“Oh, Ellen, please don’t—­I can’t bear it from you!”

Fanny’s proud head drooped to her friend’s shoulder, a stifled sob escaped her.

“There now, Fan; I didn’t mean a word of it!  I’m sorry I told you about him—­only I thought he looked so kind of cut up over something that maybe—­ Honest, Fan, I don’t believe he likes her.”

“You don’t know,” murmured Fanny, wiping her wet eyes.  “I didn’t tell you she came to see me.”

“She did!”

“Yes; it was after we had all been there, and mother was going on so about the furniture.  It all seemed so mean and sordid to me, as if we were trying to—­well, you know.”

Ellen nodded: 

“Of course I do.  That’s why you wouldn’t let her have your furniture.  I gloried in your spunk, Fan.”

“But I did let her have it, Ellen.”

“You did?  Well!”

“I’ll tell you how it happened.  Mother’d gone down to the village, and Jim was off somewhere—­he’s never in the house day-times any more; I’d been working on the new curtains all day, and I was just putting them up in the parlor, when she came....  Ellen, sometimes I think perhaps we don’t understand that girl.  She was just as sweet—­ If it wasn’t for—­ If I hadn’t hardened my heart against her almost the first thing, you know, I don’t believe I could help loving her.”