She had a hard trial a day or two after. It was in the end of the afternoon, she had her big apron on, and was in the buttery skimming the milk, when she heard the kitchen door open, and footsteps enter the kitchen. Out went little Ellen to see who it was, and there stood Alice and old Mr. Marshman! He was going to take Alice home with him the next morning, and wanted Ellen to go too; and they had come to ask her. Ellen knew it was impossible--that is, that it would not be right, and she said so; and in spite of Alice's wistful look, and Mr. Marshman's insisting, she stood her ground, not without some difficulty and some glistening of the eyes. They had to give it up. Mr. Marshman then wanted to know what she meant by swallowing herself up in an apron in that sort of way? so Ellen had him into the buttery and showed him what she had been about. He would see her skim several pans, and laughed at her prodigiously; though there was a queer look about his eyes, too, all the time. And when he went away he held her in his arms, and kissed her again and again, and said that "some of these days he would take her away from her aunt, and she should have her no more." Ellen stood and looked after them till they were out of sight, and then went upstairs and had a good cry. The butter-making soon became quite too much for Ellen to manage, so Jane Huff and Jenny Hitchcock were engaged to come by turns and do the heavy part of it; all within the buttery being still left to Ellen, for Miss Fortune would have no one else go there. It was a great help to have them take even so much off her hands, and they often did some other little odd jobs for her. The milk, however, seemed to increase as fast as the days grew longer, and Ellen could not find that she was much less busy. The days were growing pleasant too; soft airs began to come; the grass was of a beautiful green; the buds on the branches began to swell, and on some trees to put out. When Ellen had a moment of time she used to run across the chip-yard to the barn, or round the garden, or down to the brook, and drink in the sweet air and the lovely sights which never had seemed quite so lovely before. If once in a while she could get half-an-hour before tea, she used to take her book and sit down on the threshold of the front door or on the big log under the apple-tree in the chip-yard. In those minutes the reading was doubly sweet, or else the loveliness of earth and sky was such that Ellen could not take her eyes from them, till she saw Sam or Johnny coming out of the cow-house door with the pails of milk, or heard their heavy tramp over the chips; then she had to jump and run. Those were sweet half-hours. Ellen did not at first know how much reason she had to be delighted with her "Pilgrim's Progress;" she saw, to be sure, that it was a fine copy, well bound, with beautiful cuts. But when she came to look further, she found all through the book, on the margin or at the bottom of the leaves, in