"No! What? Oh, tell me quickly! What has happened? To father--"
"I don't know exactly myself," said Ellen. "That's what I was hurrying up
to find out.... Your father...he's had some sort of fight with that
horrible man Hogg in the High Street.... No, I don't know...But wait a
minute...."
Joan was gone, scurrying through the Precincts, the paper bag with the
fruit clutched tightly to her.
Ellen Stiles stared after her; her eyes were dim with kindness. There was
nothing now that she would not do for that girl and her poor father!
Knocked down to the ground they were, and Ellen championed them wherever
she went. And now this! Drink or madness--perhaps both! Poor man! Poor
man! And that child, scarcely out of the cradle, with all this on her
shoulders! Ellen would do anything for them! She would go round later in
the day and see how she could be useful.
She turned away. It was Ronder now who was "up"...and a little pulling-
down would do him no sort of harm. There were a few little things she was
longing, herself, to tell him. A few home-truths. Then, half-way down the
High Street, she met Julia Preston, and didn't they have a lot to say
about it all!
Meanwhile Joan, in another moment, was at her door.
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