"Yes, people would laugh at me," said Ellen, "not that it makes any difference."
And placing the gowns over her arm, she turned away and started up the stairs to her own room. Her mother, staring after her, made a clucking sound which was her invariable signal of alarm. She must have speculated upon what passed between Ellen and her mysterious cousin within the depths of the gloomy house among the Mills; but she said nothing. In such a mood, it was impossible to learn anything from the girl.
And as she turned at last to resume her duties in the kitchen, the shadow of a motheaten coonskin coat and beaver hat passed the window. It was the ominous shadow of Gramp Tolliver hungrily returning for his noon meal. Clearly there was calamity in the air. He had never been so active before. . . .
Ellen had a way of dealing with the truth which must have alarmed her mother. It was not that she lied; rather it was that by some selective process she withheld certain truths and brought forward others so that the resulting effect was one of distortion, complicated by the wildest variation of mood. At the moment the girl appeared to be elated, perhaps only by the possession of the three naked gowns—so elated that her high spirits carried into the afternoon when she announced her intention of going skating.
"Are you going with May?" questioned her mother as she left the house.
"No, I'm going alone. May has Clarence Murdock. I don't imagine she'll want to be disturbed." And then with a sort of grim malice she added, "Things aren't moving very fast for May. . . . Not fast enough to suit her mother. You see she spread the story months ago that she was already engaged, and now she has to make it work out."
And without another word she passed out of the door into the bright cold sunshine, her tall, fine figure moving briskly down the
