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W Ellen By the author of “The Second Life” part i. HEN would you recommend the funeral, doctor?” Mrs. Mickle sniffed and wiped her eye. “To-morrow. If Joe comes, he can be here before that. And, I say, Mrs. Mickle,” pulling the girth on his horse tighter, and straightening his saddle bags, “if the girl—you know—has the old trouble in her brain—you understand ?—put cold water to her head, and lose no time sending for me. I don’t like the look in her eyes. They’re asleep.” He trotted off, his horse’s hoofs falling dull on the sandy beach. The little wooden house stood at the end of a straggling hamlet of fishing huts, one of the longest built on the western shore of Lake Huron. The evening was dull, foreboded rain; only the slow plash of the waves on the beach broke the silence. Mrs. Mickle turned into the little room, where she and her two cronies had just completed the laying out of the corpse, with many groans and slow shakes of the head, and a good deal of honest sorrow under the sham; for the woman who lay there dead had been a helpful, earnest neighbor, if she was stern, and a canny Scot. The tallow candles they lit flickered a yellow light over the low cot where she lay. A bony, muscular frame, in coarse black; hard-cut features; haggard eyes; a face that had kept all its tenderness for but one or two—near and dear: and for them had shown, under the grimness, a loving-kindness very pitiful. She was dead now. One of the two she had loved was beside her—the girl Ellen, of whom the doctor spoke. The women watched her curiously, glancing at each other significantly , and then askance at her, as though dreading a something they could not comprehend or master. From Peterson’s Magazine (July 1863): 38–48. 212 Ellen The girl looked quiet enough. A large, square-shouldered, awkward creature, moving soft and slow, with hands and eyes as uncertain in motion as a baby’s, and an innocent, ignorant, appealing face. If you had been a brute of a man, you’d have found yourself speaking low and gently to Ellen. You could not help it. There was nothing in what she was doing to frighten them: going about “tidying” the room, handing them pins from a paper she carried, when they needed them, with the uncertain look I told you of in her childish blue eyes. Yet they were frightened, looked more and more uneasily at each other. “Ye’d best sit ye down, Ellen dear. It’ll frabbit1 Joe till see ye stirrin’ at the work. Joe’s a good brother till ye. I wish my girls had somebody as strong an’ lovin’-hearted till turn to when I’m dead.” “Dead? Yes—she’s dead! Mother, you know.” One of them, a little, mild-faced woman, came to her quickly, taking her head in her shaking arms. “Don’t laugh, Ellen,” she said. “Cry a bit, dear. Think how good she was. Lookin’ down from heaven on you an’ Joe. Nobody but you an’ Joe. You three’s all the world till each other. She in heaven, an’ you here. Lovin’ each other, you an’ Joe, takin’ good keer of each other. You of him the most. He’ll be home soon now. The letter’d reach him at Sandusky, an’ he’ll be here in an hour. Poor Joe! How’ll he bear it, an’ you not comfortin’ him?” The girl’s lips began to tremble. “Poor Joe!” she said, the tears beginning to creep out from her closed eyes. The woman nodded at the others. “Yes. There’s nobody but you an’ him. Ye’ll hev till keep the house fur him, an’ when he comes back from a v’yage—two weeks allus, isn’t it?—ye’ll hev things bright an’ tidy, an’ such a lovin’ welcome! Allus that. Never was two twins like you an’ Joe for lovin’ each other. An’ ye’ll keep yerself quiet in the house, dear, an’ not min’ goin’ till the funeral in the mornin’. Joe’ll see to all. You’re not so strong, ye know, as others, with that trouble in yer head.” Mrs. Mickle shook her head rebukingly. “I mean — ” “Let me lie down. I’m tired.” They laid her gently on the bed...

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