She stood staring at him, fascinated, one brown hand trembling on her heart. Her eyes shot a glance at the door behind him, and he was enraged anew with pity of her. "You don't know what it is to see a girl as pretty as you be," he went on, as if he scolded her, "and all dressed up to the nines." She was still looking at him dumbly. She saw beyond him the vista of Sue's broken life. "Well, then, won't you be friends?" he urged. "Great king! you couldn't be any more offish if I'd done it. You needn't think anything's altered. You're the prettiest creatur' that ever stepped, but I wouldn't give up Sue for the Queen of England. Now will you say it's square?" So nothing was changed. She could not understand it, but she nodded at him and smiled a little. Her trembling did not cease until he was far upon the road. When Mrs. Withington came home with her basket of greens, Ellen had supper all ready, and she ran forward and held a corner of her mother's apron while they walked together toward the house. "You look kind o' peaked," said Mrs. Withington tenderly. "What you got on that old brown thing for?" "I'm going to weed after supper," Ellen answered. "The garden looks real bad." Mrs. Withington gazed at her keenly. "Henry Fox asked if we were goin' to be home this evenin'," she said, with much indifference. "I told him I guessed so." Ellen held the apron hard. "O mother!" she whispered; "you see him. I haven't got to, have I?" "Law! no, child," said the other woman. "I guess you ain't. You're mother's own girl." So when the dusk came Mrs. Withington sat in the parlor and talked of crops with Henry, wan beside her, while Ellen, safe at the back of the house, weeded a bed of pansies purpling there. A soft after-glow lighted all the windows to flame, and fell full upon the face of one dark flower, quite human in its sombre wistfulness. Ellen knelt and kissed it tremulously. "You darling one!" she murmured under her breath; and somehow she knew that this was the only sort of kiss she should ever want to give. THE AUCTION