"No, you ain't; you don't belong there, and when I see a chance for you to get out where you belong--"
"I don't intend to make marriage a stepping-stone," said Ellen. "Sometimes--" She hesitated.
"Sometimes I think I would rather not go to college, after all."
"Ellen Brewster, are you crazy? Of course, you will go to college unless you marry Robert Lloyd. Perhaps he won't want to wait." Then Abby, dauntless as she was, shrank a little before Ellen's wrathful retort.
"Abby Atkins, you ought to be ashamed of yourself!" she cried. "There he's been to see me just twice, the first time on an errand, and the next with his aunt, and he's walked home with me once because he couldn't help it; his aunt told him to!"
"But here he is again to-night," said Abby, apologetically.
"What of that? I suppose he has come on another errand."
"Because you have all made me ashamed of my life to look at him," said Ellen, hotly.
Then down went her head on the bed again, and Abby was leaning over her, caressing her, whispering fond things to her like a lover.
"There, there, Ellen," she whispered. "Don't be mad, don't feel bad. I didn't mean any harm. You are such a beauty--there's nobody like you in the world--that everybody thinks that any man who sees you must want you."
"Robert Lloyd doesn't, and if he did I wouldn't have him," sobbed Ellen.
"You sha'n't if you don't want him," said Abby, consolingly.
After a while the two girls bathed their eyes with cold water, and went down-stairs into the sitting-room. Maria was making herself a blue muslin dress, and her mother was hemming the ruffles. There was a cheap blue shade on the lamp, and Maria herself was clad in a blue gingham. All the blue color and the shade on the lamp gave a curious pallor and unreality to the homely room and the two women. Mrs. Atkins's hair was strained back from her hollow temples, which had noble outlines.
"I'm going to walk a little way with Ellen, she's going home," said Abby.
"Very well," said her mother. Maria looked wistfully at them as they went out. She went on sewing on her blue muslin, rather sadly. She coughed a little.
"Why don't you put up your sewing for to-night and go to bed, child?" said her mother.