if Ellen even touched her now. With one sudden, sharp, bitter little cry she avoided Ellen’s hand, darted through the door and fled up the dark staircase.
Ellen shook her head and waddled back to her kitchen.
“Anyhow, I’ve done my duty,” she reflected. “He’d have just kept saying ‘time enough’ and put it off till he was dead and then there’d have been no managing her. She’ll have time now to get used to it, and she’ll brace up in a day or two. I will say for her she’s got spunk—which is lucky, from all I’ve heard of the Murrays. They won’t find it easy to overcrow her. She’s got a streak of their pride, too, and that’ll help her through. I wish I dared send some of the Murrays word that he’s dying, but I don’t dast go that far. There’s no telling what he’d do. Well, I’ve stuck on here to the last and I ain’t sorry. Not many women would ’a’ done it, living as they do here. It’s a shame the way that child’s been brought up—never even sent to school. Well, I’ve told him often enough what I’ve thought of it—it ain’t on my conscience, that’s one comfort. Here, you Sal-thing, you git out! Where’s Mike, too?”
Ellen could not find Mike for the very good reason that he was upstairs with Emily, held tightly in her arms, as she sat in the darkness on her little cot bed. Amid her agony and desolation there was a certain comfort in the feel of his soft fur and round velvety head.
Emily was not crying; she stared straight into the darkness, trying to face the awful thing Ellen had told her. She did not doubt it—something told her it was true. Why couldn’t she die, too? She couldn’t go on living without Father.
“If I was God I wouldn’t let things like this happen,” she said.
She felt it was very wicked of her to say such a thing—Ellen had told her once that it was the wickedest thing any one could do to find fault with God. But she didn’t
