"No, ma'am," he called back, and that, although his mother had charged him to bring back the cup or he would get a scolding. Chapter VII Ellen had clung fast all the time to her doll, her bunch of pinks, and her cup and saucer; or, rather, she had guarded them jealously. "Where did you get all these things?" her aunt Eva had asked her, amazedly, when she first caught sight of her, and then had not waited for an answer in her wild excitement of joy at the recovery of the child. The great, smiling wax doll had ridden between Jim and Eva in the buggy, Eva had held the pink cup and saucer with a kind of mechanical carefulness, and Ellen herself clutched the pinks in one little hand, though she crushed them against her aunt's bosom as she sat in her lap. Ellen's grandmother and aunt had glanced at these treasures with momentary astonishment, and so had her mother, but curiosity was in abeyance for both of them for the time; rapture at the sight of the beloved child at whose loss they had suffered such agonies was the one emotion of their souls. But later investigation was to follow. When Ellen did not seem to care for her hot milk liberally sweetened in her own mug, and griddle-cakes with plenty of syrup, her mother looked at her, and her eyes of love sharpened with inquiry. "Ain't you hungry?" she said. Ellen shook her head. She was sitting at the table in the dining-room, and her father, mother, and aunt were all hovering about her, watching her. Some of the neighbor women were also in the room, staring with a sort of deprecating tenderness of curiosity. "Do you feel sick?" Ellen's father inquired, anxiously. "You don't feel sick, do you?" repeated her mother. Ellen shook her head. Just then Mrs. Zelotes Brewster came in with her black-and-white-checked shawl pinned around her gaunt old face, which had in it a strange softness and sweetness, which made Fanny look at her again, after the first glance, and not know why. "We've got our blessing back again, mother," said her son Andrew, in a broken voice. "But she won't eat her breakfast, now mother has gone and cooked it for her, so nice, too," said Fanny, in a tone of confidence which she had never before used towards Mrs. Zelotes. "You don't feel sick, do you, Ellen?" asked her grandmother. Ellen shook her head. "No, ma'am," said she. "She says she don't feel sick, and she ain't hungry," Andrew said, anxiously. "I wonder if she would eat one of my new doughnuts. I've got some real nice ones," said a neighbor--the stout woman from the next house, whose breadth of body seemed to symbolize a corresponding spiritual breadth of motherliness, as she stood there looking at the child who had been lost and was found. "Don't you want one of Aunty Wetherhed's nice doughnuts?" asked Fanny. "No; I thank you," replied Ellen. Eva started suddenly with an air of mysterious purpose, opened a door, ran down cellar, and returned with a tumbler of jelly, but Ellen shook her head even at that.