"Don't you ever forget, and don't you ever let me forget, how the old
Squire has helped us out of this scrape," Ad said to me that night after
we had gone upstairs. "He's an old Christian. If he ever needs a friend
in his old age and I fail him, let my name be Ichabod!"
CHAPTER XIV
THE UNPARDONABLE SIN
During the first week in May the old Squire and grandmother Ruth made a
trip to Portland, and when they came back, they brought, among other
presents to us young folks at home, a glass jar of goldfish for Ellen.
In Ellen's early home, before the Civil War and before she came to the
old Squire's to live, there had always been a jar of goldfish in the
window, and afterwards at the old farm the girl had often remarked that
she missed it. Well I remember the cry of joy she gave that day when
grandmother stepped down from the wagon at the farmhouse door and,
turning, took a glass jar of goldfish from under the seat.
"O grandmother!" she cried and fairly flew to take it from the old
lady's hands.
Ellen had eyes for nothing else that evening, and as it grew dark she
went time and again with a lamp to look at the fish and to drop in
crumbs of cracker.
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