usual way, and then her aunt Eva sung out to know if she wanted to go on a sleigh-ride, and had she seen the snow; and then her father came in and that look of last night had gone from his face, and Ellen was her old self again until she was alone by herself and remembered. Fanny and Andrew and Eva had agreed to say nothing before the child about the shutting-up of Lloyd's, and their troubles in consequence. "She heard too much last night," Andrew said; "there's no use in her botherin' her little head with it. I guess that baby won't suffer." "She's jest the child to fret herself most to pieces thinkin' we were awful poor, and she would starve or somethin'," Fanny said. "Well, she sha'n't be worried if I can help it, no matter what happens to me," Eva said. After breakfast that morning Eva went to work on a little dress of Ellen's. When Fanny told her not to spend her time over that, when she had so much sewing of her own to do, Eva replied with a gay, hard laugh, that she guessed she'd wait and finish her weddin'-fix when she was goin' to be married. "Eva Loud, you ain't goin' to be so silly as to put off your weddin'," Fanny cried out. "I dunno as I've put it off; I dunno as I want to get married, anyhow," Eva said, still laughing. "I dunno, but I'd rather be old maid aunt to Ellen." "Eva Loud," cried her sister; "do you know what you are doin'?" "Pretty well, I reckon," said Eva. "Do you know that if you put off Jim Tenny, and he not likin' it, ten chances to one Aggie Bemis will get hold of him again?" "Well," said Eva, "let her. I won't have been the one to drag him into misery, anyhow." "Well, if you can feel that way," Fanny returned, looking at her sister with a sort of mixed admiration and pity. "I can. I tell you what 'tis, Fanny. When I look at Jim, handsome and head up in the air, and think how he'd look all bowed down, hair turnin' gray, and not carin' whether he's shaved and has on a clean shirt or not, 'cause he's got loaded down with debt, and the grocery-man and the butcher after him, and no work, and me and the children draggin' him down, I can bear anything. If another girl wants to do it, she must, though I'd like to kill her when I think of it. I can't do it, because--I think too much of him." "He might lose his work after he was married, you know." "Well, I suppose we'd have to run the risk of that; but I'm goin' to start fair or not at all." "Well, maybe he'll get work," Fanny said. "He won't," said Eva. She began to sing "Nancy Lee" over Ellen's dress. After breakfast Ellen begged a piece of old brown calico of her mother. "Why, of course you can have it, child," said her mother; "but what on earth do you want it for? I was goin' to put it in the rag-bag." "I want to make my dolly a dress." "Why, that ain't fit for your dolly's dress. Only think how queer that beautiful doll would look in a dress made of that. Why, you 'ain't thought anything but silk and satin was good enough for her."