"Well, Ellen has got the valedictory. What's the matter with you? Be you deaf? Ellen has got the valedictory out of all them girls and boys."
"She has, has she?" said Andrew. He dropped into a chair and looked at his wife. There was something about the intense interchange of confidence of delight between these two faces of father and mother which had almost the unrestraint of lunacy. Andrew's jaw fairly dropped with his smile, which was a silent laugh rather than a smile; his eyes were wild with delight. "She has, has she?" he kept repeating.
"Yes, she has," said Fanny. She tossed her head with an incomparable pride; she coughed a little, affected cough. "I s'pose you know what a compliment it is?" said she. "It means that she's smarter than all them boys and girls--the smartest one in her whole class."
"Yes, I s'pose it does," said Andrew. "So she has got it! Well!"
"There she comes now," said Fanny, "and Grandma Brewster."
Andrew borrowed money to buy a gold watch and chain for a graduating gift for his daughter. He would scarcely have essayed anything quite so magnificent, but Fanny innocently tempted him. The two had been sitting in the door in the cool of the evening, one day in June, about two weeks before the graduation, and had just watched Ellen's light muslin skirts flutter out of sight. She had gone down-town to purchase some ribbon for her graduating dress--she and Floretta Vining, who had come over to accompany her. "I feel kind of anxious to have her have something pretty when she graduates," Fanny said, speaking as if she were feeling her way into a mind of opposition. Neither she nor Andrew had ever owned a watch, and the scheme seemed to her breathless with magnificence.
"Yes, she ought to have something pretty," agreed Andrew.
"I don't want her to feel ashamed when she sees the other girls' presents," said Fanny.
"Well," said Fanny, "I've been thinkin'--"
"Well, I've been thinkin' that--of course your mother is goin' to give her the dress, and that's all, of course, and it's a real handsome present. I ain't sayin' a word against that; but there ain't anybody else to give her much except us. Poor Eva 'd like to, but she can't; it takes all she earns, since Jim's out of work, and I don't know what she's goin' to do. So that leaves nobody but us, and I've been thinkin'--I dun'no' what you'll say, Andrew, but I've been thinkin'--s'pose you took a little money out of the bank, and--got Ellen--a watch." Fanny spoke the last word in a faint whisper. She actually turned pale in the darkness.