"
"After breakfast, then; I'll go up right after breakfast. I
was a-going with the boys up into that 'ere wheat lot, but
anyhow I'll do that first. They won't have a chance to do much
bad or good before I get back to them, I reckon."
As soon as possible, she made her escape from Miss Fortune's
eye and questions of curiosity, which she could not bear to
answer, and got to her own room. There, the first thing she
did was to find the eleventh chapter of John. She read it as
she never had read it before; she found in it what she never
had found before; one of those cordials that none but the
sorrowing drink. On the love of Christ, as there shown, little
Ellen's heart fastened; and with that one sweetening thought,
amid all its deep sadness, her sleep that night might have
been envied by many a luxurious roller in pleasure.
At Alice's wish, she immediately took up her quarters at the
parsonage, to leave her no more. But she could not see much
difference in her from what she had been for several weeks
past; and with the natural hopefulness of childhood, her mind
presently almost refused to believe the extremity of the evil
which had been threatened. Alice herself was constantly
cheerful, and sought by all means to further Ellen's
cheerfulness; though careful, at the same time, to forbid, as
far as she could, the rising of the hope she saw Ellen was
inclined to cherish.
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