“She’ll never do that,” said the mother.  “Lottie says Ellen thinks he’s just perfect.  He cheers her up, and takes her out of herself.  We’ve always acted with her as if we thought she was different from other girls, and he behaves to her as if she was just like all of them, just as silly, and just as weak, and it pleases her, and flatters her; she likes it.”

“Oh, Lord!” groaned the father.  “I suppose she does.”

This was bad enough; it was a blow to his pride in Ellen; but there was something that hurt him still worse.  When the fellow had made sure of her, he apparently felt himself so safe in her fondness that he did not urge his suit with her.  His content with her tacit acceptance gave the bitterness of shame to the promise Kenton and his wife had made each other never to cross any of their children in love.  They were ready now to keep that promise for Ellen, if he asked it of them, rather than answer for her lifelong disappointment, if they denied him.  But, whatever he meant finally to do, he did not ask it; he used his footing in their house chiefly as a basis for flirtations beyond it.  He began to share his devotions to Ellen with her girl friends, and not with her girl friends alone.  It did not come to scandal, but it certainly came to gossip about him and a silly young wife; and Kenton heard of it with a torment of doubt whether Ellen knew of it, and what she would do; he would wait for her to do herself whatever was to be done.  He was never certain how much she had heard of the gossip when she came to her mother, and said with the gentle eagerness she had, “Didn’t poppa talk once of going South this winter?”

“He talked of going to New York,” the mother answered, with a throb of hope.

“Well,” the girl returned, patiently, and Mrs. Kenton read in her passivity an eagerness to be gone from sorrow that she would not suffer to be seen, and interpreted her to her father in such wise that he could not hesitate.

II.

If such a thing could be mercifully ordered, the order of this event had certainly been merciful; but it was a cruel wrench that tore Kenton from the home where he had struck such deep root.  When he actually came to leave the place his going had a ghastly unreality, which was heightened by his sense of the common reluctance.  No one wanted to go, so far as he could make out, not even Ellen herself, when he tried to make her say she wished it.  Lottie was in open revolt, and animated her young men to a share in the insurrection.  Her older brother was kindly and helpfully acquiescent, but he was so far from advising the move that Kenton had regularly to convince himself that Richard approved it, by making him say that it was only for the winter and that it was the best way of helping Ellen get rid of that fellow.  All this did not enable Kenton to meet the problems of his younger son, who required him to tell what he was to do with his dog and his pigeons, and to declare at once how he was to dispose of the cocoons he had amassed so as not to endanger the future of the moths and butterflies involved in them.  The boy was so fertile in difficulties and so importunate for their solution, that he had to be crushed into silence by his father, who ached in a helpless sympathy with his reluctance.