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Ellen came in, cloaked and hatted, with her delicate face excited in prospect of the adventure; and her mother saw Bittridge look at her with more tenderness than she had ever seen in him before. "I'll take good care of her, Mrs. Kenton," he said, and for the first time she felt herself relent a little towards him. A minute after they were gone Lottie bounced into the room, followed by Boyne.
She had no shrinking from the names which Kenton avoided with disgust. "The only question for you is to consider what you shall say to Mr. Breckon." "Say to him? Why, of course, if Ellen has made up her mind, there's only one thing I can say." "Indeed there is! He ought to know all about that disgusting Bittridge business, and you have got to tell him." "Sarah, I couldn't. It is too humiliating.
Was he going to take the child back to Tuskingum, which was the same as taking her back to Bittridge? it hurt her to confront him with this question, and she tried other devices for staying and appeasing him.
Kenton came from quieting the hysterical girl in her room she had the task, almost as delicate and difficult, of quieting her husband. She had kept him, by the most solemn and exhaustive entreaty, from following Bittridge downstairs and beating him with his stick, and now she was answerable to him for his forbearance.
"Well, we must wait now," said his wife. "If he doesn't write to her, she won't write to him." "Has she ever answered that letter of his?" "No, and I don't believe she will now." That night Ellen came to her mother and said she need not be afraid of her writing to Bittridge. "He hasn't changed, if he was wrong, by coming and saying those things to poppa, and nothing has changed."
"Then let's sit down here, or in the ladies' parlor. It won't take me two minutes to make everything right. If you don't believe I'm in earnest I know you don't think I am, but I can assure you Will you let me speak with you about Miss Ellen?" Still Kenton did not answer, shutting his lips tight, and remembering his promise to his wife. Bittridge laughed, as if in amusement at what he had done.
Now, however, by treating him rudely, Kenton was aware that he had bound himself to render Bittridge some account of his behavior throughout, if the fellow insisted upon it. "I want nothing to do with you, sir," he said, less violently, but, as he felt, not more effectually. "You are in my house without my invitation, and against my wish!" "I didn't expect to find you here.
He only knew how little it needed with us!" "Well, now, it's we who've got to have the courage. Or you have. Do you know what Ellen wants to have done?" Mrs. Kenton put it in these impersonal terms, and as a preliminary to shirking her share of the burden. "She doesn't want to have him refused?" "She wants to have him told all about Bittridge."
The intolerable familiarity of all this was fast working Kenton to a violent explosion, but he contained himself, and Bittridge stepped forward to lay the paper on the table before him. "It's the original roster of Company C, in your regiment, and " "Take it away!" shouted Kenton, "and take yourself away with it!" and he grasped the stick that shook in his hand.
Kenton stared at him. "When this other one first made up to us on the boat my heart went down. I thought of Bittridge so." "Mr. Breckon?" "Yes, the same lightness; the same sort of trifling Didn't you notice it?" "No yes, I noticed it. But I wasn't afraid for an instant. I saw that he was good." "Oh!" "What I'm afraid of now is that Ellen doesn't care anything about him."
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