Her mother kept her patience with difficulty.  “No, not about that.  About you!  He’s asked your father—­I can’t understand yet why he did it, only he’s so delicate and honorable, and goodness known we appreciate it —­whether he can tell you that—­that—­” It was not possible for such a mother as Mrs. Kenton to say “He loves you”; it would have sounded as she would have said, too sickish, and she compromised on:  “He likes you, and wants to ask you whether you will marry him.  And, Ellen,” she continued, in the ample silence which followed, “if you don’t say you will, I will have nothing more to do With such a simpleton.  I have always felt that you behaved very foolishly about Mr. Bittridge, but I hoped that when you grew older you would see it as we did, and—­and behave differently.  And now, if, after all we’ve been through with you, you are going to say that you won’t have Mr. Breckon—­”

Mrs. Kenton stopped for want of a figure that would convey all the disaster that would fall upon Ellen in such an event, and she was given further pause when the girl gently answered, “I’m not going to say that, momma.”

“Then what in the world are you going to say?” Mrs. Kenton demanded.

Ellen had turned her face away on the pillow, and now she answered, quietly, “When Mr. Breckon asks me I will tell him.”

“Well, you had better!” her mother threatened in return, and she did not realize the falsity of her position till she reported Ellen’s words to the judge.

“Well, Sarah, I think she had you there,” he said, and Mrs. Kenton then said that she did not care, if the child was only going to behave sensibly at last, and she did believe she was.

“Then it’s all right” said the judge, and he took up the Tuskingum Intelligencer, lying till then unread in the excitements which had followed its arrival the day before, and began to read it.

Mrs. Kenton sat dreamily watching him, with her hands fallen in her lap.  She suddenly started up, with the cry, “Good gracious!  What are we all thinking of?”

Kenton stared at her over the top of his paper.  “How, thinking of?”

“Why Mr. Breckon!  He must be crazy to know what we’ve decided, poor fellow!”

“Oh,” said the judge, folding the Intelligencer on his knee.  “I had forgotten.  Somehow, I thought it was all settled.”

Mrs, Kenton took his paper from him, and finished folding it.  “It hasn’t begun to be settled.  You must go and let him know.”

“Won’t he look me up?” the judge suggested.

“You must look him up.  Go at once dear!  Think how anxious he must be!”

Kenton was not sure that Breckon looked very anxious when he found him on the brick promenade before the Kurhaus, apparently absorbed in noting the convulsions of a large, round German lady in the water, who must have supposed herself to be bathing.  But perhaps the young man did not see her; the smile on his face was too vague for such an interest when he turned at Kenton’s approaching steps.