The Portion of Labor Part 28

[Ill.u.s.tration: I'll study hard and try to do you credit]

"I have no doubt as to your doing your best, my dear," she said, "and it gives me great pleasure to do this for you."

With that, said with a graceful softness which was charming, she made as if to rise, but Ellen still stood before her. She had something more to say. "If ever I am able," she said--"and I shall be able some day if I have my health--I will repay you." Ellen spoke with the greatest sweetness, yet with an inflexibility of pride evident in her face. Cynthia smiled. "Very well," she said, "if you feel better to leave it in that way. If ever you are able you shall repay me; in the mean time I consider that I am amply paid in the pleasure it gives me to do it." Cynthia held out her slender hand to Ellen, who took it gratefully, yet a little constrainedly.

In the opposite corner the doll sat staring at them with eyes of blank blue and her vacuous smile. A vague sense of injury was over Ellen, in spite of her delight and her grat.i.tude--a sense of injury which she could not fathom, and for which she chided herself.

However, Andrew felt it also.

After this surprising benefactress and Robert had gone, after repeated courtesies and a.s.surances of obligation on both sides, Andrew turned to f.a.n.n.y. "What does she do it for?" he asked.

"Hush; she'll hear you."

"I can't help it. What does she do it for? Ellen isn't anything to her."

f.a.n.n.y looked at him with a meaning smile and nod which made her tear-stained face fairly grotesque.

"What do you mean lookin' that way?" demanded Andrew.

"Oh, you wait and see," said f.a.n.n.y, with meaning, and would say no more. She was firm in her conclusion that Cynthia was educating their girl to marry her favorite nephew, but that never occurred to Andrew. He continued to feel, while supremely grateful and overwhelmed with delight at this good fortune for Ellen, the distrust and resentment of a proud soul under obligation for which he sees no adequate reason, and especially when it is directed towards a beloved one to whom he would fain give of his own strength and treasure.

As for Ellen, she was in a tumult of wonder and delight, but when she looked at the doll in her corner there came again that vague sense of injury, and she felt again as if in some way she were being robbed instead of being made the object of benefit.

After Ellen had gone to bed that night she wondered if she ought to go to college, and maybe gain thereby a career which was beyond anything her own loved ones had known, and if it were not better for her to go to work in the shop after all.

Chapter XXII

When Mrs. Zelotes was made acquainted with the plan for sending Ellen to Va.s.sar she astonished f.a.n.n.y. f.a.n.n.y ran over the next morning, after Andrew had gone to work, to tell her mother-in-law.

She sat a few minutes in the sitting-room, where the old lady was knitting, before she unfolded the burden of her errand.

"Cynthia Lennox came to our house last night with Robert Lloyd," she said, finally.

"Did they?" remarked Mrs. Zelotes, who had known perfectly well that they had come, having recognized the Lennox carriage in the moonlight, and having been ever since devoured with curiosity, which she would have died rather than betray.

"Yes, they did," said f.a.n.n.y. Then she added, after a pause which gave wonderful impressiveness to the news, "Cynthia Lennox wants to send Ellen to college--to Va.s.sar College."

Then she jumped, for the old woman seemed to spring at her like released wire.

"Send her to college!" said she. "What does she want to send her to college for? What right has Cynthia Lennox got to send Ellen Brewster anywhere?"

f.a.n.n.y stared at her dazedly.

"What right has she got interfering?" demanded Mrs. Zelotes again.

"Why," replied f.a.n.n.y, stammering, "she thought Ellen was so smart.

She heard her valedictory, and the school-teacher had talked about her, what a good scholar she was, and she thought it would be nice for her to go to college, and she should be very much obliged herself, and feel that we were granting her a great pleasure and privilege if we allowed her to send Ellen to Va.s.sar."

All unconsciously f.a.n.n.y imitated to the life Cynthia's soft elegance of speech and language.

"Pshaw!" said Mrs. Zelotes; but still she said it not so much angrily as doubtfully. "It's the first time I ever heard of Cynthia Lennox doing such a thing as that," said she. "I never knew she was given to sending girls to college. I never heard of her giving anything to anybody."

f.a.n.n.y looked mysteriously at her mother-in-law with sudden confidence. "Look here," she said.

"What?"

The two women looked at each other, and neither said a word, but the meaning of one flashed to the other like telegraphy.

"Do you s'pose that's it?" said Mrs. Zelotes, her old face relaxing into half-shamed, half-pleased smiles.

"Yes, I do," said f.a.n.n.y, emphatically.

"You do?"

"Yes, I 'ain't a doubt of it."

"He did act as if he couldn't take his eyes off her at the exhibition," agreed Mrs. Zelotes, reflectively; "mebbe you're right."

"I know I'm right just as well as if I'd seen it."

"Well, mebbe you are. What does Andrew say?"

"Oh, he wishes he was the one to do it."

"Of course he does--he's a Brewster," said his mother.

"But he's got sense enough to be pleased that Ellen has got the chance."

"He ain't any more pleased than I be at anything that's a good chance for Ellen," said the grandmother; but all the same, after f.a.n.n.y had gone, her joy had a sharp sting for her. She was not one who could take a gift to heart without feeling its sharp edge.

Had Ellen's sentiment been a.n.a.lyzed, she felt in something the same way that her grandmother did. However, she had begun to dream definitely about Robert, and the reflection had come, too, that this might make her more his equal, as nearly his equal as Maud Hemingway.

Maud Hemingway went to college, and so would she. Of the minor accessories of wealth she thought not so much. She looked at her hands, which were very small and as delicately white as flowers, and reflected with a sense of comfort, of which she was ashamed, that she would not need ever to stain them with leather now. She looked at the homeward stream of dingy girls from the shops, and thought with a sense of escape that she would never have to join them; but she was conscious of loving Abby better, and Maria, who had also entered Lloyd's. Abby, when she heard the news about Va.s.sar, had looked at her with a sort of fierce exultation.

"Thank the Lord, you're out of it, anyhow!" she cried, fervently, as a soul might in the midst of flames.

Maria had smiled at her with the greatest sweetness and a certain wistfulness. Maria was growing delicate, and seemed to inherit her father's consumptive tendencies.

"I am so glad, Ellen," she said. Then she added, "I suppose we sha'n't see so much of you."

"Of course we sha'n't, Maria Atkins," interposed Abby, "and it won't be fitting we should. It won't be best for Ellen to a.s.sociate with shop-girls when she's going to Va.s.sar College."

But Ellen had cast an impetuous arm around a neck of each.

"If ever I do such a thing as that!" said she. "If ever I turn a cold shoulder to either of you for such a reason as that! What's Va.s.sar College to hearts? That's at the bottom of everything in this world, anyhow. I guess you'll see it won't make any difference unless you keep on thinking such things. If you do--if you think I can do anything like that--I won't love you so much."

Ellen faced them both with gathering indignation. Suddenly this ign.o.ble conception of herself in the minds of her friends stung her to resentment. But Abby seized her in two wiry little arms.