WE had been at Cohen’s less than a month, when Wallace wrote he could wait no longer.

He had not sold his play, but he had a very good position now as associate editor of a big magazine, and he said he was making ample money to support a wife. So he was coming for his little Ellen at once. We were terribly excited, particularly as Wallace followed up the letter with a telegram to expect him next day, and sure enough the next day he arrived.

He did not want any “fussy” wedding. Only papa and I were to be present. Wallace did not even want us, but Ellen insisted. She looked sweet in her little dress (I had made it), and although I knew Wallace was good and a genius and adored my sister, I felt broken-hearted at the thought of losing her, and it was all I could do to keep from crying at the ceremony.

As the train pulled out, I felt so utterly desolate that I stretched out my arms to it and cried out aloud:

“Ellen, Ellen, please don’t go. Take me, too.”

I never realized till then how much I loved my sister. Dear little Ellen, with her love of all that was best in life, her sense of humor, her large, generous heart, and her absolute purity. If only she had stayed by my side I am sure her influence would have kept me from all the mistakes and troubles that followed in my life, if only by her disgust and contempt of all that was dishonorable and unclean. But Wallace had taken our Ellen, and I had lost my best friend, my sister and my chum.

That night I cried myself to sleep. I thought of all the days Ellen and I played together. Even as little girls mama had given us our special house tasks together. We would peel potatoes and shell peas or sew together, and as we worked we would tell each other stories, which we invented as we went along. Our stories were long and continuous, and full of the most extravagant and unheard of adventures and impossible riches, heavenly beauty and bravery that was wildly reckless.

There was one story Ellen continued for weeks. She called it: “The Princess who used Diamonds as Pebbles and made bonfires out of one-hundred-dollar bills.” I made up one called: “The Queen who Tamed Lions and Tigers with a Smile,” and more of that kind.

Mama would send Ellen and me upon messages sometimes quite a distance from our house, for we had English friends living at the other side of the town. The French quarter was cheaper to live in and that was why we lived in Hochelaga. Ellen and I used to walk sometimes three miles each way to Mrs. McAlpin’s house on Sherbrooke Street. To vary the long walk we would hop along in turn, holding one another’s legs by the foot, or we would walk backward, counting the cracks in the sidewalks that we stepped over. One day a young man stood still in the street to watch us curiously. Ellen was holding one of my feet and I was hopping along on the other. He came up to us and said:

“Say, sissy, did you hurt your foot?”

“No,” I returned, “we’re just playing Lame Duck.”

It was strange now, as I lay awake, crying over the going of my sister, that all the queer little funny incidents of our childhood together came thronging to my mind. I vividly remembered a day when mama was sick and the doctor said she could have chicken broth. Well, there was no one home to kill the chicken, for that was the time papa went to England. Ellen and I volunteered to kill one, for Sung Sung, our old servant, believed it would be unlucky to kill one with the master away—one of his everlasting superstitions. Ellen and I caught the chicken. Then I held it down on the block of wood, while Ellen was to chop the head off. Ellen raised the hatchet, but when it descended she lowered it very gently, and began to cut the head off slowly. Terrified, I let go. Ellen was trembling, and the chicken ran from us with its head bleeding and half off.

“Qu’est-ce que c’est? Qu’est-ce que c’est? De little girl, she is afraid. See me, I am not scared of nutting.”

It was the French grocer boy. He took that unfortunate chicken, and placing its bleeding head between the door and jamb, he slammed the door quickly, and the head was broken. I never did like that boy, now I hated him. Ellen looked very serious and white. When we were plucking the feathers off later, she said:

“Marion, do you know we are as guilty as Emile and if it were a human being, we could be held as accomplices.”

“No, no, Ellen,” I insisted. “I did not kill it. I am not guilty. I wouldn’t be a murderer like Emile for anything in the world.”

“You’re just as bad,” said Ellen severely, “perhaps worse, because to-night you’ll probably eat part of your victim.”

I shuddered at the thought, and I did not eat any chicken that night.

When I was packing my things, preparatory to leaving Mrs. Cohen’s next morning, for I was to return home, now that Ellen was married, Mrs. Cohen came in with a large piece of cake in her hand. She was very sorry for me because I had lost my sister.

“There,” she said, “that will make you feel better. Taste it. It is good.” I could not eat their cake, because she used goose grease instead of butter, but I didn’t want to hurt her feelings and I pretended to take a bite. When she was not looking I stuffed it into the wastepaper basket.

“Now never mind about your sister no more,” she said kindly. “The sun will shine in your window some day.”

I was still sniffing and crying, and I said:

“It looks as if it were going to rain to-day.”

“Vell then,” she said, “it vill not be dry.”