Amabel wriggled impatiently away, and faced to the wall. "Yes, I know," said she. That morning Amabel would not eat any breakfast, and Fanny suggested that Ellen take her for a ride on the street-cars. "We can get along without you for an hour," she whispered, "and I am afraid that child will be sick." So Ellen and Amabel set out, leaving Fanny and the dressmaker at work, and when they were returning past the factories the noon whistles were blowing and the operatives were streaming forth. Ellen was surprised to see her father among them as the car swept past. He walked down the street towards home, his dinner-bag dangling at his side, his back more bent than ever. She wondered uneasily if her father was ill, for he never went home to dinner. She looked back at him as the car swept past, but he did not seem to see her. He walked with an air of seeing nothing, covering the ground like an old dog with some patient, dumb end in view, heeding nothing by the way. It puzzled her also that her father had come out of Lloyd's instead of McGuire's, where he had been employed all summer. Ellen, after she reached home, watched anxiously for her father to come into the yard, but she did not see him. She assisted about the dinner, which was a little extra on account of the dressmaker, and all the time she glanced with covert anxiety at the window, but her father did not pass it. Finally, when she went out to the pump for a pitcher of water, she set the pitcher down, and sped to the orchard like a wild thing. A suspicion had seized her that her father was there. Sure enough, there he was, but instead of lying face down on the grass, as he had done before, he was sitting back against a tree. He had the air of having settled into such a long lease of despair that he had sought the most comfortable position for it. His face was ghastly. He looked at Ellen as she drew near, and opened his mouth as if to speak, but instead he only caught his breath. He stared hard at her, then he closed his eyes as if not to see her, and motioned her away with one hand with an inarticulate noise in his throat. But Ellen sat down beside him. She caught his two hands and looked at him. "Father, look at me," said she, and Andrew opened his eyes. The expression in them was dreadful, compounded of shame and despair and dread, but the girl's met them with a sort of glad triumph and strength of love. "Now look here, father," she said, "you tell me all about it. I didn't want to know last night. Now I want to know. What is the matter?"