"That's so," said Eva, emphatically. "I guess we've read enough sight more than some folks that has had a good deal more chance to read. Fanny and me have taken books out of the library full as much as any of the neighbors, I rather guess." "We've read every single thing that Mrs. Southworth has ever written," said Fanny, "and that's sayin' considerable." "And all Pansy's and Rider Haggard's," declared Eva, with triumph. "And every one of The Duchess and Marie Corelli, and Sir Walter Scott, and George Macdonald, and Laura Jean Libbey, and Charles Reade, and more, besides, than I can think of." "Fanny has read 'most all Tennyson," said Eva, with loyal admiration; "she likes poetry, but I don't very well. She has read most all Tennyson and Longfellow, and we've both read _Queechee_, and _St. Elmo_, and _Jane Eyre_." "And we've read the Bible through," said Fanny, "because we read in a paper once that that was a complete education. We made up our minds we'd read it through, and we did, though it took us quite a while." "And we take _Zion's Herald_, and _The Rowe Gazette_, and _The Youth's Companion_," said Eva. "And we've both of us learned Ellen geography and spellin' and 'rithmetic, till we know most as much as she does," said Fanny. "That's so," said Fanny. "I snum, I believe I could get into the high-school myself, if I wasn't goin' to git married," said Eva, with a gay laugh. She was so happy in those days that her power of continued resentment was small. The tide of her own bliss returned upon her full consciousness and overflowed, and crested, as with glory, all petty annoyances. The visiting woman took up her work, and rose to go with a slightly abashed air, though her small brown eyes were still blanks of impregnable defence. "Well, I dunno what I've said to stir you both so," she remarked again. "If I've said anythin' that riled you, I'm sorry, I'm sure. As I said before, folks must do as they are a mind to with their own children. If they see fit to keep 'em home from school until they're women grown, and if they think it's best not to punish 'em when they run away, why they must. I 'ain't got no right to say anythin', and I 'ain't." "You--" began Fanny, and then she stopped short, and Eva began arranging her hair before the glass. "The wind blew so comin' home," she said, "that my hair is all out." The visiting woman stared with a motion of adjustive bewilderment, as one might before a sudden change of wind, then she looked, as a shadowy motion disturbed the even light of the room and little Ellen passed the window. She knew at once, for she had heard the gossip, that the ready tongues of recrimination were hushed because of the child, and then Ellen entered. The winter afternoon was waning and the light was low; the child's face, with its clear fairness, seemed to gleam out in the room like a lamp with a pale luminosity of its own.