RUTH ERSKINE’S CROSSES

“He has made everything beautiful in his time.” [p. 112].

RUTH ERSKINE’S CROSSES

BY
PANSY
Author of “Ester Ried,” “Julia Ried,” “Four Girls at Chautauqua,”
“Chautauqua Girls at Home,” etc.

BOSTON
LOTHROP PUBLISHING COMPANY

Copyright, 1879,
by
D. Lothrop and Company.
————
All rights reserved.
PANSY
Trade-Mark Registered June 4, 1895.

CONTENTS.

RUTH ERSKINE’S CROSSES.

CHAPTER I.
HER CROSS SEEMS HEAVY.

SHE stood in the hall, waiting. She heard the thud of trunks and valises on the pavement outside. She heard her father’s voice giving orders to driver and porter. She wondered why she did not step forward and open the door. How would other girls greet their mothers? She tried to think. Some of them she had seen—school-girls, with whom she had gone home, in her earlier life, who were wont to rush into their mother’s arms, and, with broken exclamations of delight, smother her with kisses How strange it would be if she should do any such thing as that! She did not know how to welcome a mother! How should she? She had never learned.

Then there was that other one, almost harder to meet than a mother; because her father, after all, had the most responsibility about the mother; it was really his place to look after her needs and her comfort. But this sister would naturally look to her for exclusive attention. A sister! She, Ruth Erskine, with a grown-up sister, only a few years younger than herself! And yet one whom she had not only never seen, but, until the other day, of whose existence she had never heard! How perfectly unnatural it all was!

Oh, if father had only, only done differently! This cry she had groaned out from the depths of her soul a hundred times, during the two weeks of the father’s absence. After she had turned away from the useless wail, “Oh, that all this had never been!” and resolutely resolved not to be weak and worthless, and desert her father in his need, and give herself up to vain regrets, she found that the regretting only took another form. Since it was, and must be, and could not honorably be gotten away from, why had he not faced the necessity long ago, when she was a child? Why had they not grown up together, feeling and understanding that they were sisters, and owed to each other a sister’s forbearance?—she could not bring herself to say love. If her father had only settled it years and years ago, and brought the woman home, and made her position assured; and if the people had long and long ago settled down to understanding it all, what a blessed thing it would have been! Over and over, in various forms, had this argument been held with Ruth and her rebellious heart, and it had not helped her. It served to make her heart throb wildly, as she stood there waiting. It served to make the few minutes that she waited seem to her like avenging hours. It served to make her feel that her lot was fearfully, exceptionally, hopelessly hard.

There had been daughters before, who were called on to meet new mothers. Yes, but this was an old, old mother—so old that, in the nature of things, she ought, years ago, to have been reconciled to the event, and to have accepted it as a matter of course. But what daughter, before this, had been called upon suddenly to greet, and to receive in social equality an own sister? The more she thought of it, the more unnerved she felt.

And so the door was opened at last by Judge Erskine himself. His daughter had decreed that no servant should be in attendance. She wanted as few lookers-on as possible.

“Well, daughter,” he said; and, even in that swift moment, she wondered if he ever spoke that quiet-toned, “well, daughter,” to that other one. Then she did come forward and hold out her hand, and receive her father’s lingering kiss. Something in that, and in the look of his eyes, as he put her back from him, and gazed for an instant into hers, steadied her pulses, and made her turn with a welcome to the strangers. There was an almost pleading look in those eyes of his.

“How do you do?” she said, simply, and not coldly; and she held out her hand to the small, faded-looking woman, who shrank back, and seemed bewildered, if not frightened. “Do you feel very tired with the long journey?”

“Susan,” said her father, to the third figure, who was still over by the door, engaged in counting the shawl-straps and satchels. “This is my daughter Ruth.”

There was an air of ownership about this sentence, which was infinitely helpful to Ruth. What if he had said, “This is your sister Ruth?” She gave her hand. A cold hand it was, and she felt it tremble; but, even in that supreme moment, she noticed that Susan’s hair was what, in outspoken language, would be called red; and that she was taller than accorded with grace, and her wrap, falling back from its confinings, showed her dress to be short-waisted, and otherwise ill-fitting. Long afterward Ruth smiled, as she thought of taking in such details at such a moment.

It transpired that there was still another stranger awaiting introduction—a gentleman, tall and grave, and with keen gray eyes, that seemed looking through this family group, and drawing conclusions.

“My daughter, Judge Burnham.” This was Judge Erskine’s manner of introduction. For the time, at least, he ignored the fact that he had any other daughter. Very little attention did the daughter bestow on Judge Burnham; eyes and wits were on the alert elsewhere. Here were these new people to be gotten to their rooms, and then gotten down again; and there was that awful supper-table to endure! She gave herself to the business of planning an exit.

“Father, you want to go directly to your rooms, I suppose? I have rung for Thomas, to attend to Judge Burnham, and I will do the honors of the house for Susan.”

Very carefully trained were face and tone. Beyond a certain curious poise of head, which those who knew her understood betokened a strong pressure of self-control, there was nothing unusual. Really, the worst for her was to come. If she could but have made herself feel that to send a servant with this new sister would be the proper thing to do, it would have been so much easier. But for the watchful eyes and commenting tongue of that same servant she would have done it. But she sternly resolved that everything which, to the servant’s eyes, would look like formality, or like hospitality extended simply to guests, should be dispensed with. It would do to ring for Thomas, to attend Judge Burnham; but a daughter of the house must have no other escort than herself. On the way up-stairs she wondered what she should say when the room door closed on them both. Here, in the hall, it was only necessary to ask which satchel should go up immediately, and which trunk went to which room. But, when all the business was settled, what then?

She began the minute the attending servant deposited the satchels, and departed:

“Do you need to make any change in dress before tea, and can I assist you in any way?”

For answer, the young girl thus addressed turned toward her earnest gray eyes—eyes that were full of some strong feeling that she was holding back—and said, with eager, heartful tones:

“I am just as sorry for you as I can be. If there is any way in which I can help to make the cross less heavy, I wish you would tell me what it is.”

Now, this was the last sentence that Ruth Erskine had expected to hear. She had studied over possible conversations, and schooled herself to almost every form, but not this.

“What do you mean?” she asked, returning the earnest gaze with one full of bewilderment.

“Why, I mean that I have some dim conception of how hard, how awfully hard all this is! Two strangers to come into your home and claim, not the attention accorded to guests, but the position belonging to home! It is dreadful! I have felt so sorry for you, and for myself, all day, that I could not keep the tears from my eyes. I want to make myself as endurable as possible. If you will only show me how I will try very hard.”

What was Ruth Erskine to reply to this? It was hard; she felt too truthful to disclaim it. Just now it seemed to her almost impossible to endure it. She tried to turn it off lightly.

“Oh, we shall live through it,” she said, and the attempt to make her voice unconstrained startled even herself. Susan abated not one whit the earnestness in her voice.

“I know we shall,” she said. “Because it must be done—because it is right—and because we each have an Almighty Helper. I asked your father, and mine, as soon as ever I saw him, whether you were a Christian. It seemed to me it would be an impossible ordeal if you were not. He is my father, Ruth. I know it is hard for you to hear me use that name, which you have supposed for so many years belonged exclusively to you. If it had been right, I could almost have made myself promise never to use it. But it wouldn’t be the right way to manage, I am sure. Ruth, you and I shall both breathe freer, and understand each other better, if we admit from the first, that father has done wrong in this thing. Now I know that is dreadful to say. But remember, he is my father. I am not to blame because he loved your mother better than he ever could mine. I am not to blame for a bit of the tragedy any more than you are. And I have been a sufferer, just as you are. All my life I have been without a father’s love and care. All my life I have had to imagine what the name ‘father’ must mean. I am not blaming him; I am simply looking at facts. We shall do better to face this thing. I really had something to forgive. He admitted it. I have forgiven him utterly, and my heart just bleeds for him and for you. But then we shall, as you say, get through all the embarrassments, and come off conquerors in the end.”

Utter silence on Ruth’s part. How shall I confess to you that this conversation disappointed and angered her? She was nerved to bear heavy crosses. If this new sister had been arrogant, or cringing, or insufferably rude and exacting, I think Ruth would have borne it well. But this simple, quiet facing of difficulties like a general—this grave announcement that she, too, had been a sufferer—even the steady tone in which she pronounced that word “father,” gave Ruth a shiver of horror. The worst of it was—yes, the very worst of it was—this girl had spoken truth. She was a sufferer, and through no fault of her own, through Judge Erskine’s pride and self-will. Here was the sting—it was her father’s fault—this father who had been one of her strongest sources of pride during all her proud days of life. “It is true enough,” she told herself, bitterly. “But she need not have spoken it—I don’t want to hear it.” And then she turned away and went out of the room—went down-stairs, and paused in the hall again, resting her arm on that chair and trying to still the tumult in her angry heart.

As for the sister, looking after her with sad eyes, she turned the key on her at last, and then went over to the great, beautiful bed—more beautiful than any on which she had ever slept—and bowed before it on her knees. What if Ruth Erskine had had to contend with a sister who never got down on her knees! Yet she positively did not think of that. It seemed to her that nothing could make the cross more bitter than it was. She opened the door at last, quietly enough, and went forward to where her father was standing, waiting for her, or for some one—something to come to him and help him in his bewilderment. He looked ten years older than when she saw him two weeks ago, and there was that appealing glance in his eyes that touched his daughter. A moment before she had felt bitter toward him. It was gone now.

“I brought Judge Burnham home with me,” he said, speaking quickly, as if to forestall any words from her. “He is an old friend. He was a pet of your mother’s, Ruth, in his boyhood, and he knew all about her, and about——this. I thought it would be better than to be quite alone at first.”

“Yes,” Ruth said, in a tone that might be assenting, or it might simply be answering. In her heart she did not believe that it would be better for them to have Judge Burnham in their family circle, and she wished him away. Was not the ordeal hard enough without having an outsider to look on and comment?

“When will you be ready for supper?” she asked, and, though she tried to make her voice sound naturally, she knew it was cold and hard.

“Why, as soon as Judge Burnham and——they come down,” he said, hesitatingly. What were they all going to call each other? Should he say “your mother,” or should he say “Mrs. Erskine?” He could not tell which of the two seemed most objectionable to him, so he concluded to make that foolish compromise and say “they.”

“Where did you leave Susan?” he questioned.

“In her room.”

Ruth’s tone was colder than before. Judge Erskine essayed to help her.

“She is the only alleviating drop in this bitter cup,” he said, looking anxiously at Ruth for an assuring word. “It has been a comfort to me to think that she seemed kind and thoughtful, and in every way disposed to do right. She will be a comfort to you, I hope, daughter.”

Poor Ruth! If her father had said, “She is perfectly unendurable to me; you must contrive in some way that I shall not have to see her or hear her name,” it would have been an absolute relief to his daughter’s hard-strained, quivering nerves. It was almost like an insult to have him talk about her being a help and a comfort! She turned from him abruptly, and felt the relief which the opening door and the entrance of Judge Burnham gave.

The supper-bell pealed its summons through the house, and Judge Erskine went in search of his wife; but Ruth called Irish Kate to “tell Miss Erskine that tea was ready,” flushing to the roots of her hair over the name “Miss Erskine,” and feeling vexed and mortified when she found that Judge Burnham’s grave eyes were on her. Mrs. Erskine was a dumpy little woman, who wore a breakfast-shawl of bright blue and dingy brown shades, over a green dress, the green being of the shade that fought, not only with the wearer’s complexion, but with the blue of the breakfast-shawl. The whole effect was simply dreadful! Ruth, looking at it, and at her, taking her in mentally from head to foot, shuddered visibly. What a contrast to the grandeur of the man beside her! And yet, what a pitiful thing human nature was, that it could be so affected by adverse shades of blue and green, meeting on a sallow skin! Before the tea was concluded, it transpired that there were worse things than ill-fitting blues and greens. Mrs. Judge Erskine murdered the most common phrases of the king’s English! She said, “Susan and me was dreadful tired!” And she said, “There was enough for him and I!” She even said his’n and your’n, those most detestable of all provincialisms!

And Ruth Erskine sat opposite her, and realized that this woman must be introduced into society as Mrs. Judge Erskine, her father’s wife! There had been an awkward pause about the getting seated at the table. Ruth had held back in doubt and confusion, and Mrs. Erskine had not seemed to know what her proper place should be; and Judge Erskine had said, in pleading tone: “Daughter, take your old place, this evening.” And then Ruth had gone forward, with burning cheeks, and taken the seat opposite her father, as usual, leaving Mrs. Erskine to sit at his right, where she had arranged her own sitting. And this circumstance, added to all the others, had held her thoughts captive, so that she heard not a word of her father’s low, reverent blessing. Perhaps, if she had heard, it might have helped her through the horrors of that evening. There was one thing that helped her. It was the pallor of her father’s face. She almost forgot herself and her own embarrassment in trying to realize the misery of his position. Her voice took a gentle, filial tone when she addressed him, that, if she had but known it, was like drops of oil poured on the inflamed wounds which bled in his heart.

Altogether, that evening stood out in Ruth Erskine’s memory, years afterward, as the most trying one of her life. There came days that were more serious in their results—days that left deeper scars—days of solemn sorrow, and bold, outspoken trouble. But for troubles, so petty that they irritated by their very smallness, while still they stung, this evening held foremost rank.

“I wonder,” she said, in inward irritation, as she watched Mrs. Erskine’s awkward transit across the room, on her father’s arm, and observed that her dress was too short for grace, and too low in the neck, and hung in swinging plaits in front—“I wonder if there are no dressmakers where they came from?” And then her lip curled in indignation with herself to think that such petty details should intrude upon her now. Another thing utterly dismayed her. She had thought so much about this evening, she had prayed so earnestly, she had almost expected to sail high above it, serene and safe, and do honor to the religion which she professed by the quietness of her surrender of home and happiness; for it truly seemed to her that she was surrendering both. But it was apparent to herself that she had failed, that she had dishonored her profession. And when this dreadful evening was finally over, she shut the door on the outer world with a groan, as she said, aloud and bitterly:

“Oh, I don’t know anything to prevent our home from being a place of perfect torment! Poor father! and poor me!”

If she could have heard Judge Burnham’s comment, made aloud also, in the privacy of his room, it might still have helped her.

“That girl has it in her power to make riot and ruin of this ill-assorted household, or to bring peace out of it all. I wonder which she will do?”

And yet, both Judge Burnham and Ruth Erskine were mistaken.

CHAPTER II.
SIDE ISSUES.

HOW did they ever get into such a dreadful snarl as this, anyway?

It was Eurie Mitchel who asked this question. She had seated her guests—Flossy Shipley and Marion Wilbur—in the two chairs her small sleeping-room contained, and then curled herself, boarding-school fashion, on the foot of her bed. To be sure it is against the rule, at this present time, for girls in boarding-schools to make sofas of their beds. So I have no doubt it was, when Eurie was a school-girl; nevertheless, she did it.

“Where should I sit?” she asked her mother, one day, when that good lady remonstrated. “On the floor?”

And her mother, looking around the room, and noting the scarcity of chairs, and remembering that there were none to spare from any other portion of the scantily-furnished house, said, “Sure enough!” and laughed off the manifest poverty revealed in the answer, instead of sighing over it. And Eurie went on, making a comfortable seat of her bed, whenever occasion required.

On this particular evening they had been discussing affairs at the Erskine mansion, and Eurie had broken in with her exclamation, and waited for Marion to answer.

“Why,” said Marion, “I know very little about it. There are all sorts of stories in town, just as is always the case; but you needn’t believe any of them; there is not enough truth sprinkled in to save them. Ruth says her father married at a time when he was weak, both in body and mind—just getting up from a long and very serious illness, during which this woman had nursed him with patience and skill, and, the doctors said, saved his life. He discovered, in some way—I don’t know whether she told him so or not, but somehow he made the discovery—that she lost possession of her heart during the process, and that he had gotten it, without any such intention on his part, and, in a fit of gratitude, he married her in haste, and repented at leisure.”

“How perfectly absurd!” said Eurie, in indignation. “The idea that he had no way of showing his gratitude but by standing up with her, and assenting to half a dozen solemn statements, none of which were true, and making promises that he couldn’t keep! I have no patience with that sort of thing.”

“Well, but,” said Flossy, coming in with gentle tone and alleviating words, just as she always did come into the talk of these two. “The woman was a poor, friendless girl then, living a dreadful boarding-house life, entirely dependent on her needle for her daily bread. Think how sorry he must have been for her!”

Eurie’s lip curled.

“He might have been as sorry for me as he pleased, and I dare say I shouldn’t have cared if he had expressed his sorrow in dollars and cents; but to go and marry me, promise to love and cherish, and all that sort of thing, and not to mean a word of it, was simply awful.”

“Have you been studying the marriage service lately?” Marion asked, with a light laugh and a vivid blush. “You seem strangely familiar with it.”

“Why, I have heard it several times in my life,” Eurie answered, quickly, her cheeks answering the other’s blushes. “And I must say it seems to me a ceremony not to be trifled with.”

“Oh, I think so too!” Flossy said, in great seriousness and sweet earnestness. “But what I mean is, Judge Erskine, of course, did not realize what he was promising. It was only a little after Ruth’s mother died, you know, and he—well, I think he could not have known what he was about.”

“I should think not!” said Eurie. “And then to deliberately desert her afterward! living a lie all these years! I must say I think Judge Erskine has behaved as badly as a man could.”

“No,” said Marion; “he has repented. He might have gone on with his lie to the end of life, and she would have made no sign, it seems. The woman can keep a promise, whether he can or not. But think what it must have cost him to have told all this to Ruth! Why, I would rather tell my faults to the President than to Ruth Erskine! Oh, I think he has shown that there is nobility in his nature, and sincerity in his recent profession. It would have been so easy to have consoled his conscience with the plea that it was too late to make amends. Still, I confess I think as you do, Eurie. Marriage is a very solemn covenant—not to be entered into lightly, I should think; and, when its vows are taken, they are to be lived by. I don’t feel very gracious toward Judge Erskine.”

“Still, if the Lord Jesus and his own daughter can forgive him, I think we ought to be able to do so.”

It was Flossy’s voice again—low and quiet, but with that curious suggestion of power behind it that Flossy’s voice had taken of late. It served to quiet the two girls for a minute, then Marion said:

“Flossy Shipley, I’m not sure but you have our share of brains, as well as heart. To be sure, in one sense it is none of our business. I don’t believe he cares much whether we ever forgive him or not. But I believe I shall, and feel sorry for him, too. What a precious muddle he has made of life! How are they ever going to endure that woman?”

“Is she so very dreadful?”

This was Eurie’s insinuating question.

“Father and Nellis called, but I could not bring myself to go with them. I was sure I shouldn’t know what to say to Ruth. I tried to have them describe her, but father said she must be seen to be appreciated, and Nell would do nothing but shrug his shoulders and whistle.”

“She is simply terrible!” Marion said, with emphasis. “I didn’t stay fifteen minutes, and I heard more bad grammar and bad taste in the use of language than I hear in school in a week. And her style of dressing is—well,” said Marion, pausing to consider a strong way of putting it—“is enough, I should think, to drive Ruth Erskine wild. You know I am not remarkable for nervousness in that direction, and not supposed to be posted as to styles; but really, it would try my sense of the fitness of things considerably to have to tolerate such combinations as she gets up. Then she is fussy and garrulous and ignorant, and, in every way, disagreeable. I really don’t know how I am ever to—”

And at that point Marion Wilbur suddenly stopped.

“What about the daughter?” Eurie asked.

“Well,” said Marion, “I hardly know; she impresses you strangely. She is homely; that is, at first sight you would consider her very homely indeed; red hair—though why that shouldn’t be as much the orthodox color as brown, is a matter of fashion I presume—but she is large featured, and angular, and has the air and bearing that would be called exceedingly plain; for all that, there is something very interesting about her; I studied her for half an hour, and couldn’t decide what it was. It isn’t her smile, for she was extremely grave, hardly smiled at all. And I’m not sure that it is her conversation—I dare say that might be called commonplace—but I came away having a feeling of respect for her, a sort of liking that I couldn’t define, and couldn’t get away from.”

“Nellis liked her,” said Eurie. “He was quite decided in his opinion; said she was worth a dozen frippery girls with banged hair, and trains, and all that sort of thing, but he couldn’t give a definite reason, any more than you can, why he ‘approved of’ her, as he called it.”

“I don’t know what her tastes can be,” continued Marion. “She doesn’t play at all, she told me, and she doesn’t sing, nor daub in paints; that is one comfort for Ruth; she won’t have to endure the piano, nor help hang mussy-looking pictures in ‘true lights’—whatever lights they may be. But I should imagine she read some things that were worth reading. She didn’t parade her knowledge, however, if she has any. In short, she is a mystery, rather; I should like you to see her.”

“Perhaps she is fond of fancy-work,” suggested Flossy, somewhat timidly; whereupon Marion laughed.

“I don’t fancy you are to find a kindred spirit in that direction, my dear little Kittie!” she said, lightly. “No one to glance at Susan Erskine would think of fancy-work, for the whole evening. There is nothing in her face or manner, or about her attire, that would suggest the possibility of her knowing anything about fancy matters of any sort. I tell you her face is a strange one. I found myself quoting to my ‘inner consciousness’ the sentence: ‘Life is real, life is earnest,’ every time I looked at the lines about her mouth. Whatever else she can or can not do, I am morally certain that she can’t crochet. Girls, think of that name—Susan Erskine! Doesn’t it sound strangely? How do you suppose it sounds to Ruth? I tell you this whole thing is dreadful! I can’t feel reconciled to it. Do you suppose she will have to call that woman mother?”

“What does she call her now?”

“Well, principally she doesn’t call her at all. She says ‘you’ at rare intervals when she has to speak to her, and she said ‘she,’ when she spoke of her to me; not speaking disagreeably you know, but hesitatingly, as if she did not know what to say, or what would be expected of her. Oh, Ruth does well; infinitely better than I should, in her circumstances, I feel sure. I said as much to that disagreeable Judge Burnham who keeps staying there, for no earthly reason, that I can see, except to complicate Ruth’s trials. ‘How does your friend bear up under it?’ he asked me, with an insinuating air, as though he expected me to reveal volumes. ‘She bears it royally, just as she always does everything,’ I said, and I was dreadfully tempted to add: ‘Don’t you see how patiently she endures your presence here?’ Just as though I would tell him anything about it, if she tore around like a lunatic!”

“Oh, well, now,” said Eurie, oracularly, “there are worse crosses in life, I dare say, than Ruth’s having to call that woman mother.”

“Of course there are; nobody doubts it; the difficulty is that particular type of cross has just now come to her, and while she doesn’t have to bear those others which are worse, she does have to bear that; and it is a cross, and she needs grace to help her—just exactly as much grace as though there wasn’t anyone on earth called on to bear a harder trial. I never could understand why my burnt finger should pain me any the less because somebody else had burned her entire arm.”

At this point Flossy interrupted the conversation with one of those innocent, earnest questions which she was always in these days asking, to the no small confusion of some classes of people.

“Are these two women Christians?”

“That I don’t know,” Marion answered, after staring at the questioner a moment in a half dazed way. “I wondered it, too, I remember. Flossy Shipley, I thought of you while I sat there, and I said to myself, ‘She would be certain to make the discovery in less time than I have spent talking with them.’ But I don’t know how you do those things. What way was there for me to tell? I couldn’t sit down beside them and say, ‘Are you a Christian?’ could I? How is it to be done?”

Flossy looked bewildered.

“Why,” she said, hesitatingly, “I don’t know. I never thought there was anything strange about it. Why shouldn’t those things be talked of as well as any others? You discovered whether the young lady was fond of music and painting. I can’t see why it wouldn’t have been just as easy to have found out about her interests in more important matters.”

“But how would you have done it? Just suppose yourself to have been in Judge Erskine’s parlor, surrounded by all those people who were there last evening, how would you have introduced the subject which is of the most importance?”

“Why,” said Flossy, looking puzzled, “how do I know? How can I tell unless I had been there and talked it over? You might as well ask me how I should have introduced the question whether—well, for instance, whether they knew Mr. Roberts, supposing they had come from the same city, and I had reason to think it possible—perhaps probable—that they were his friends. It seems to me I should have referred to it very naturally, and that I should have been apt to do it early in our conversation. Now, you know it is quite possible—if not probable—that they are intimate friends of the Lord Jesus. Why couldn’t I have asked them about him?”

Marion and Eurie looked at each other in a sort of puzzled amusement, then Marion said:

“Still I am not sure that you have answered my question about how to begin on such a subject. You know you could have said, ‘Did you meet Mr. Roberts in Boston?’ supposing them to have been in Boston. But you could hardly say, ‘Did you meet the Lord Jesus there?’ I am not sure but that sounds irreverent to you. I don’t mean it to be; I really want to understand how those subjects present themselves to your mind.”

“I don’t believe I can tell you,” Flossy said, simply. “They have no special way of presenting themselves. It is all so new to me that I suppose I haven’t gotten used to it yet. I am always thinking about it, and wondering whether any new people can tell me anything new. Now I am interested in what you told me about that Susan, and I feel as though I should like to ask her whether there were any very earnest Christians where she used to live and whether they had any new ways of reading the Bible, and whether the young ladies had a prayer-meeting, and all those things, you know.”

Again Marion and Eurie exchanged glances. This didn’t sound abrupt, or out of place, or in any sense offensive to ideas of propriety. Yet who talked in that way among their acquaintances? And how had Flossy gotten ahead of them in all these things? It was a standing subject of wonderment among those girls how Flossy had outstripped them.

They were silent for a few minutes. Then Eurie suddenly changed the current of thought: “How strange that these changes should have come to Ruth and we know nothing about it until a mother and sister were actually domiciled! We are all so intimate, too. It seems that there are matters about which we have not learned to talk together.”

“Ruth was always more reserved than the rest of us,” Flossy said. “I am not so surprised at not knowing about her affairs; we are more communicative, I think. At least I have told you all about the changes that are to come to me, and I think you would tell me if you had anything startling, wouldn’t you?”

Marion rose up and went over to Flossy, and, bending, kissed her fair cheek.

“You little pink blossom,” she said, with feeling, “I’ll tell you all the nice things I can think of, one of these days. In the meantime I must go home; and remember, Eurie, you are not to do anything dreadful of any sort without telling Flossy and me beforehand.”

“I won’t,” said Eurie, with a conscious laugh, and the trio separated.

Two hours later Marion Wilbur was the recipient of the following note:

“Dear Marion:—

“I promised to tell you—though I don’t intimate that this comes under your prescribed limit of things ‘awful.’ Still, I want to tell you. I am almost sorry that I have not been like little Flossy, and talked it all over freely with you. Someway I couldn’t seem to. The truth is, I am to be married, in six week’s time, to Mr. Harrison. Think of my being a minister’s wife! But he is going away from here and perhaps I can learn. There! the ice is broken; now I can tell you about it. Come as soon as you can, and, as Flossy says, ‘Have a quiet little confidence.’ Lovingly,

“Eurie.”

It was about this very hour that Eurie opened and looked at, in a maze of astonishment and bewilderment, a dainty envelope, of special size and design, from which there fell Marion Wilbur’s wedding-cards!

CHAPTER III.
A CROSS OF LEAD.

I DO not know that I need even try to tell you about the succession of petty trials and embarrassments that haunted Ruth Erskine’s way during the next few days. They belonged to that class of trials hard to endure—so hard, indeed, that at times the spirit shrinks away in mortal terror, and feels that it can bear no more; and yet in the telling to a listener they dwindle in importance. As for Ruth, she did not tell them—she lived them.

Everything was so new; nothing in or about the house could go on according to the old fashion; and yet there was no new fashion shaped. She saw many a thing which she must not do, and but few things that seemed to bear doing. She must stop in the act of ordering dinner, and remember in confusion that it was not her business to order dinners in this house any more. And yet she must remember that the nominal mistress seemed to know no more about ordering dinners for a family of eight than she knew about ten thousand other things that were waiting for her attention. Poor Ruth struggled and groaned and wondered, and rarely cried, but grew paler, if possible, than before, and her forehead was continually drawn, either with lines of pain or of intense self-suppression. She congratulated herself that her father escaped some of the misery. He went early to his office, shutting the door on the incongruous elements in his household with a sense of relief, and going out into the business world, where everything and everybody were as usual, and returning late, giving as little time to the home puzzle as possible. Yet it wore on him. Ruth could see that, and it but increased her burden to feel that the struggle she made to help was so manifest a struggle, and was, in some sense, a failure.

He detained her one morning in the library, with that special word of detention which as yet he had never applied to any one but her.

“My daughter, let me see you a moment before I go out. Do you think we ought to try to have some friends come in, in a social way?”

At this question Ruth stood aghast. Her father’s friends had hitherto not been hard for her to entertain—lawyers, judges, professional men of different degrees of prominence, often without their wives, and when the ladies were included they were of an age, as a rule, to expect little in the way of entertainment from Ruth, except a gracious attention to their comfort; so that, beyond very careful directions issued to very competent servants, and a general outlook on the perfected arrangements, little had been expected of her. But now it was different; other than professional people would expect invitations; and besides, the hostess was no hostess at all—would not know what to do—and, what was infinitely more painful, what not to do.

No wonder that Ruth was appalled over this new duty looming before her. Yet of course it was a duty; she flushed over the thought that her father had been obliged to suggest it. Of course people were expecting introductions; of course they would call—hosts of them. How much better it would be to have a gathering of a few friends before the great world pounced in upon them, so they might feel that at least with a few the ordeal of introduction was over.

“I don’t mean a large party,” her father hastened to explain. “Just a few friends—not professional ones, you know, but some of your new acquaintances in the church, perhaps. I thought you might like to have a gathering somewhat like that which you told me of at our little friend, Flossy Shipley’s.”

If he had not been looking down at the grate, just then, instead of into his daughter’s face, he would have seen her start, and almost catch her breath over this suggestion. It was not that she was jealous of little Flossy, for whom her father had shown very special and tender regard ever since the prayer-meeting which he attended in her company, but it came to her with a sudden sense of the change that had fallen upon them. To think that they—the Erskines—should be making an attempt to have a social gathering like unto one that Flossy Shipley had planned!

“We couldn’t do the things that she did,” Ruth said, quickly. “The elements which we would have to bring together would be too incongruous.”

“No,” he answered, “not exactly like hers, of course, but something simple and informal. I thought your three friends would come, and Dr. Dennis, you know, and people of that stamp, who understand and will help us. Wouldn’t it be well to try to do something of the kind, daughter, or doesn’t the idea meet with your approval?”

“Oh, yes,” she said, drawing in her breath. “Yes, father, we must do something. I will try. But I hardly know how to commence. You know I am not mistress of the house now; it makes it difficult for me.”

“I know,” he said, and the expression of his face led his daughter instantly to regret that she had made such a remark. It was the life she lived at this time—saying words, and regretting that she had done so. They went on, however, perfecting the arrangements for the social gathering. There had occurred to Ruth an instant trouble in the way, which was that ever-present one in the American woman’s life—clothes.

“We can not hasten this thing,” she said. “There will need to be some shopping done, and some dress-making—that is, I should think there would need to be.”

She corrected herself, and the embarrassment involved in the fact that she was not the mistress of the new comers presented itself. Suppose they chose to think they had clothes enough, and proposed to appear in any of the ill-made, badly-selected materials which seemed to compose their wardrobe! If they were only two children, that she might shut up, in a back room up-stairs, and turn the key on outsiders until such time as they could be made presentable, what a relief it would be!

Evidently her father appreciated that embarrassment.

“I tried to arrange that matter before I came home,” he said. “I furnished money and suggested as well as I could; but it didn’t work. I hardly know what was the trouble. They didn’t understand, or something. Ruth, what can you do about it? Is there any way of managing?”

Ruth tried to consider, while her cheeks flushed, and her heart beat hard, in what way she could suggest to her father to manage his wife and daughter.

“Susan would listen to suggestions, I think,” she said, slowly. “But I don’t know whether”—

And then she broke off, and recurred to another of the endless trials of this time. If she and her father were to be compelled to hold conversations concerning this woman, it was absolutely necessary that they come to an understanding as to what to call her.

“Father,” she said, plunging desperately into the depths of the question. “What am I to call her? Does she—or, do you—desire that I should say mother?”

“No,” he said, quickly. “Surely not, unless”—

“Well, then,” Ruth said, after waiting in vain for him to conclude. “Am I to say ‘Mrs. Erskine?’”

“Oh, I don’t know.”

He spoke in visible agitation, and commenced a nerve-distracting walk up and down the room.

“I don’t know anything about any of this miserable business. Sometimes I am very sorely tempted to wish that I had left everything as it was, and gone on in my old life, and endured the results.”

“Don’t,” said Ruth, aghast at this evidence of desperate feeling, and roused, for a moment, from minor considerations into a higher plane. “Don’t feel in this way, father; we will do the best we can, and it will all come out right; at least, we will try to do what is right.”

He came over to her then, standing before her, looking into her eyes, and there was that half-appealing look in his which had touched her before.

“Ruth, if we could—if there was any way that we could—manage to like them a little, it would make the whole thing so much better, both for them and us.”

What an amazing thing to say! what an almost ludicrous thing, when one reflected that he was talking about his wife! Yet none knew better than did Ruth that names implying love did not make love! How pitiful this appealing sentence was! How could her father ever hope to learn to like this woman, who was his wife? For herself, she had not even thought of such a thing as trying. The most she had planned for was to endure, to tolerate—certainly not to like, most certainly never to love! She stood dumbly before her father, having no word of help for him. And presently he turned from her with a sigh; and, when he spoke again, it was in a business-like tone:

“Well, daughter, do the best you can. Manage everything exactly as you have been in the habit of doing. About the dress question, talk with Susan, if you can; tell her what will be proper—what you want done. I will see that her mother follows her directions. For the rest, we will manage some way; we shall have to depend on the kindness of our friends. Judge Burnham will help us in any way he can. He understands matters.”

This suggested to Ruth to inquire in regard to him.

“What is Judge Burnham staying in town for? Where is he staying, anyway?”

“Why, he lives in town. He is practicing here. Didn’t you know it? He has been absent a long time on professional business. I hardly know how it has happened that you have never met him until now. He has a country-seat ten miles or so away from the city. He is there a good deal, I presume; but he boards now at the Leighton House. He was about changing boarding places when we came home. It was for that reason, among others, that I invited him to stop with us for a few days. You like him, don’t you, Ruth?”

This last with a sudden change of tone, and almost anxiety expressed in his manner.

“Oh, yes,” said Ruth, half in impatience, as one to whom the subject was too unimportant to stop over. And she was conscious of a flitting determination that, whatever other person she might be called upon to like, she would never trouble herself to make any effort of that sort for him.

And then she went away to plan for a party in which she was to be the real head, while appearing before the world only as the dutiful daughter; to plan, also, for the new mother and sister’s toilets—whether they would, or not, trusting to her father’s authority to make them submissive to her schemes.

A little more talk about that matter of liking people, Ruth was destined to hear; and it developed ideas that bewildered her. It chanced that Flossy Shipley came in for a little chat with Ruth, over the recent astounding news connected with their mutual friend, Marion. It chanced, also, that the new-comers were both up stairs for the evening, Mrs. Erskine being one of those persons who indulge in frequent sick-headaches, during which time her daughter Susan was her devoted slave. So Judge Erskine sat with his daughter, book in hand, because conversation between them was now of necessity on such trying subjects that they mutually avoided it; but he rarely turned a leaf; and he greeted Flossy Shipley with a smile of pleasure, and asked, almost pleadingly, if he might stay and listen to their gossip. Very glad assent, Flossy gave, and emphasized it by talking to Ruth with as much apparent freedom as though he were absent.

“I like it,” she said, speaking of Marion. “I think she will make such a perfectly splendid minister’s wife.”

Flossy still dealt largely in superlatives, and paid very little attention to the grammatical position of her adjectives. “I am almost sorry that I am not going to live here, so I could have the benefit of her; she will be just as full of helpful plans for people! And when she gets in a position to influence them you will see how much good she can do. Ruth, were you very much surprised?”

“Greatly so. I imagined that she did not even admire Dr. Dennis very much. I don’t know that she ever gave me reason to think so, except by being silent sometimes, when I expected her to speak; but of course that is accounted for now. Isn’t the marriage sudden?”

“More sudden than they had planned,” Flossy said. “Dr. Dennis found it necessary to be absent just then on a matter of business, and to go West, just in the direction they had proposed to go together, and he was obliged to be absent for some time, which would give him little chance for vacation later in the season, and, in short,” said Flossy, with a bright smile, “I think if they would own it, they were very lonely, and very anxious to enjoy each other’s society, and thought they were wasting time, and set about finding reasons why they should change their plans. You know reasons can almost always be found for things, when we are very anxious to find them!”

“Is that so!” Judge Erskine asked, looking up from his book, and speaking in so earnest a tone that both girls turned toward him inquiringly. “Do you mean to say that if one were anxious to change—well, say his opinion of a person, he could bring himself to do it on reasonable grounds?”

It was a curious question, and to Ruth it was a very embarrassing one. Her cheeks flushed painfully, and her eyes drooped to the bit of fancy work which lay idly in her lap.

“That wasn’t quite what I was thinking about,” Flossy said, gently and seriously, as one who realized that his question reached deeper than he meant her to understand. “But I do truly think, sir, that if we feel as though we ought to change our opinion of a person, we can set seriously about doing it and accomplish it.”

“In that case, you would not believe it necessary to have any enemies in this world, would you?”

“Not real enemies, I think, though I wouldn’t want to be friends, of course, with everybody. But—well, Judge Erskine, I can’t explain to you what I mean. I don’t know how to reason, you see. All I can do is to tell you what really occurred. There is a person whom I disliked; he was very trying to me, and I had to be thrown in his society very often, and I knew I ought to feel differently toward him, because, you know, I couldn’t hope to be of the least help to him, unless I felt differently. So I set myself earnestly to trying, and I succeeded. I have the kindest possible feelings toward him, and I think I am gaining a little influence.”

During this recital Flossy’s fair, peach-blossom cheek had taken a deeper shade, and her eyes drooped low. She was giving what Judge Erskine felt was a bit of heart-history, and he did not know that she realized any personal application. How should the innocent little mouse know anything about his affairs?

“Do you mind telling me how you set to work to accomplish this change?” he asked, and his daughter knew that his voice was almost husky.

“First,” said Flossy, simply and gravely, “I prayed for him; I gave all my soul to a desire for his conversion; I prayed to be shown how to help him—how to act toward him; then I prayed for grace to like him, to be interested in him, and to overlook his faults, or his failings; and then—why, I am not sure there is any ‘then’ to it. It is all told in that word ‘prayer.’ The Lord Jesus helped me, Judge Erskine; that is the whole of it.”

“Do you really think we have a right to pray about the matter of our likes and dislikes?” There was no mistaking the earnestness in Judge Erskine’s voice this time.

Flossy turned wondering eyes on him, as she said, “Oh, yes, indeed! The direction is, ‘Casting all your care upon him,’ and that is a real care, you know.” Ah! didn’t Judge Erskine know? “And then He says, ‘In everything by prayer and supplication, let your requests be made known.’ I couldn’t doubt my right. Indeed it seemed to me to be a duty, not only to pray, but actually to supplicate, to coax, you know, just as I was so tempted to do when a child. It seemed blessed to me to think that the Lord Jesus took such minute notice of our human nature that he knew it would help us to be allowed to keep a subject constantly before him, and to keep coaxing about it. Don’t you think that is wonderful, Judge Erskine?”

“Wonderful!” repeated Judge Erskine, in a moved tone, and he arose and began that pacing up and down the room, which always with him indicated deep feeling. Ruth and Flossy presently continued their talk in a lower tone, until Judge Erskine came toward them again and said, “I will bid you good-night, I think, and thank you, my dear young lady. Your words are strong and helpful; don’t forget them in any future experience of life that you may have; perhaps they will help you through deep waters, some day.”

Then he went to the library. As for Ruth, she sought her room with two thoughts following her: one, that Flossy had been to her father what she had failed in being—a helper; and the other, that possibly she might pray herself into a different state of feeling toward this woman and this girl, who were to her now only heavy, heavy crosses.

CHAPTER IV.
BITTER HERBS.

THE morning of the night which had closed in gloom, opened to Ruth Erskine with a faint promise of better things. Not so much that, either; rather, she resolved on heroism. The sun shone, and the air was fresh with the breath of coming spring. The outlook seemed more hopeful. Ruth resolved upon trying Flossy’s way. She would pray about this matter; she would nerve herself for duty and trial: she would bear whatever of disagreeableness came athwart her plans. No matter how obstinate or offensive this new woman proved herself to be on the question of wardrobe, she would bravely face the ordeal, and do what she could. No amount of offensiveness should cause her to lose self-control. It was childish and useless to yield in this way, and let inevitable trials crush one. She did not mean to do it. Her father should see that she could be as strong over real trials, as Flossy Shipley could be over imaginary ones; for what had that little kitten ever had to try her? This Ruth said, with a curl of her handsome upper lip.

She went about her morning duties with something like the briskness of her old life, and settled herself to Bible-reading, resolved on finding something to help her. She had not yet learned the best ways of reading in the Bible; indeed, she had not given that subject the attention which Flossy had. To begin a chapter, and read directly and seriously through it, getting what information she could, was the most that she, as yet, knew about the matter. And the chapter occurring next to the one that she read yesterday was the fifth of Romans: “Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ: by whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God. And not only so, but we glory in tribulations also; knowing that tribulation worketh patience; and patience, experience; and experience, hope.” Thus on, through the solemn and wonderful chapter, heeding the words indeed; getting some sort of idea of St. Paul’s meaning, and yet not making his experience personal, in the least; not realizing that the sentence, “We have peace with God,” included Ruth Erskine; not seeing, at least, that it was a present promise, referring to present experience; not realizing anything, save a desire to be armed for unpleasant and continuous duties, and a dim idea that reading the Bible was one of the preparations which were given her to make. In much the same spirit, she knelt to pray. She was humble, she was reverent, she was in earnest, she prayed for strength, for wisdom, for patience; and the words were strictly proper, and in accordance with the desires. The prayer, to a listener, would have breathed the spirit of confidence and faith; yet it must be confessed that Ruth Erskine arose from her knees without any sense of having really communed with Christ, without any realization of his presence, and without any very definite expectation of receiving actual, practical benefit from the exercise. She did not realize the feeling, and yet she possessed somewhat of the same spirit of the child who prayed: “Dear Jesus, help me to be good to-day. I know I can be good if I try, and I intend to try; but you can help me if you want to!” Remember, I do not say that she realized it; but that does not alter the fact that she went out from her room, to meet the trials of the day, strong in the strength of her own resolves. She repaired at once to Mrs. Judge Erskine’s room, determined to be very composed and patient, and to combat whatever disagreeable or dissenting thing might be said with forbearance and kindness.

Mrs. Erskine’s objection to new and fine clothing must be overcome, but it should be done wisely. She resolved to say nothing to Susan beforehand. She would not admit, even to herself, that her father’s evident confidence in Susan’s powers was a trial to her; but, all the same, she determined to show him that she, too, had powers, and that she could manage matters without Susan’s help.

Alas for Ruth! Mrs. Erskine was not in the least averse to fine feathers. She was not lofty, nor angry, nor hurt; she was good-naturedly and ungrammatically and exasperatingly loquacious. It would have been much easier for Ruth to endure ill-temper. She was nerved for that. Unconsciously she had planned for and prayed for self-control, to enable her to endure, not what she would meet in Mrs. Erskine, but what she would have had to contend with in herself, had she been in Mrs. Erskine’s place; and as, given the same circumstances, the two would act in a totally different manner, failure was inevitable.

“Come in,” said Mrs. Erskine, heartily, in answer to Ruth’s low knock. “Land alive! come right in, don’t stop to rap. What’s the use of being so particular with one’s folks? I been a wishin’ you would run in and have a chat. I was tellin’ your pa, only last night, how chirk and nice we could all be here, if you would be sort of sociable, you know, and not so stiff and proud-like. Not that you mean to be proud, I s’pose; Susan says you don’t. She says it’s natural for some folks to be haughty. I s’pose it is. But, land alive! I’m glad I’m not one of them kind. Haughty folks always did shrivel me right up. Set down here by the fire. I think these grates is real comfortable. I told your pa, last night, that I wouldn’t have shivered over an old barn of a wood-stove, all these years, if I’d known what comfortable things there was in the world. How dreadful pale you look! Is it natural for you to look so like a ghost all the time?”

“I am not accustomed to having a great deal of color in my face, I believe,” Ruth answered, sitting squarely and stiffly in the most uncomfortable chair she could find in the room, and feeling, just then, that to be an actual ghost would be a positive relief.

“Well, now, I don’t believe it’s nature for any human being to be so like a sheet as that. If I was your pa, I’d have you through a course of medicine in less than no time. You need strengthenin’ up. You ought to have some Peruvian bark, or some quassia chips, or some kind of bitter stuff steeped up for you to drink. It would do you a power of good, I know it would. You jest let me fix you up a mess, like I do Susan, and see what it’ll do for you. S’prise your pa with the change in you, I dare say.”

Poor Ruth! She felt as though stuff that was bitter enough had been mixed and steeped, and held to her lips, and that she was being obliged to drink it to the very dregs. Did she need it? Was it possible that the Divine Physician saw her need of such bitter herbs as these which had fallen to her lot? She started, and even flushed a little over the sudden thought. She did not believe it. This was her father’s sin, not hers. It had only fallen upon her because of the old, solemn law: “The iniquities of the fathers shall be visited upon the children.” She hurried her thoughts away from it. It would not do to sit in that room, with that woman staring at her, and indulge in questionings like these.

“I came in to see if I could be of any assistance to you in the way of shopping. You will need something new, I suppose, before the gathering of friends which my father proposes to have.”

Ruth had decided to take it as a matter of course that new garments were to be bought, and thus forestall, if she could, haughty objections. She need not have been thus careful. Mrs. Erskine had stated truly that she was not one of the “haughty” sort. She had no objection to any number of new dresses, and to their being made as elaborately as possible.

“Now you speak of it, I dare say I do,” she said, leaning back complacently in her comfortable little rocker. “In fact, your pa spoke of that very thing this morning. He said like enough you would ’tend to it, and he filled my pocket-book up handsome. There ain’t a stingy streak about your pa. I knew that, years and years ago, when he was a young man. It was the very first thing that drawed me to him—the free kind of way in which he threw around his money. It seemed so noble-like, specially when I was drivin’ every nerve to keep soul and body together, and lived among folks that didn’t dare to say their bodies was their own, for fear they would have ’em seized on for debt, and took to jail. I tell you that was livin’! You don’t know nothing about it, and I hope to the land that you never will.”

What could Ruth do but groan inwardly, and wish that her father had been, in his youth, the veriest miser that ever walked the earth! Anything, so that this terrible woman would not have been “drawed” to him. She tried to hurry the question:

“What have you thought of getting?” she asked, nervously twisting and untwisting the tassels of the tidy against which she leaned, and feeling disagreeably conscious that a glow of color had mounted to her very temples in her efforts at self-control.

“Land alive, I don’t know. I’ve thought of a dozen different dresses since your pa told me this morning what he wanted. He wants things to be awful nice, I can see that; and why shouldn’t he? A man that’s got money and is free with it has a right to say what he will have, I’m sure. I think it ought to be something bright, like something—well, bridie, you know.”

This last with such a distressing little simper that it was almost more than Ruth could do to keep from rushing from that awful room, and declaring to her father that she would have no more to do with this thing. He should fight his dreadful battles alone. But outwardly she held still, and the shrill, uncultured little voice went on:

“You see I am almost like a bride, meeting your pa’s friends so for the first time, though land knows it is long enough ago that I planned what to wear when I should meet ’em. It took longer to get ready than I expected.”

There was not even a spice of bitterness in this sentence. If there had been—if there had been a suggestion that this woman felt somewhat of her own wrongs, Ruth thought that she could have borne it better. But the tone was simply contemplative, as of one who was astonished, in a mild way, over the tragedy that life had managed to get up for her.

“You see,” she continued, “I hadn’t a chance for much dressin’ or thinkin’ about it; your pa was so weak that I had about all I could do to fix bitters and things, and manage to keep the breath of life in his body. And many’s the time when I thought he’d beat, and die right before my face and eyes in spite of me. Then he went off on that journey afore he was able, and I’ve always believed, and always shall, that he didn’t rightly know what he was about after that, for quite a spell. So now I think more than likely it would please him to have things kind of gay and lively. I ain’t said anything about it to Susan—she ha’n’t no special interest in dressing up, anyway, and she and I don’t always agree about what looks nice, but I think your pa would like it if I had a green silk—bright, rich green, you know, nothing dull and fady. I saw one when I was a girl—fact is, I sewed on it—and it was for a bride, too, and I said to myself then, says I, ‘If I’m ever a bride, I’ll have a dress as much like this as two peas.’ I’ve been a good while about it, but that’s neither here nor there. I’ve got a beautiful red bow; that wide, rich-looking kind of ribbon; a woman give it to me for tending up to her poor girl afore she died. She had the consumption, and I took care of her off and on a good share of the fall, and she give me this ribbon. It’s real nice, though land knows I didn’t want pay for doing things for her poor girl. ’Twan’t pay, neither, for the matter of that; it was just to show they felt grateful, you know, and I’ve always set store by that ribbon. I’ve never wore it, because Susan she thought it wan’t suited to our way of livin’ and no more it wan’t, though we lived nice enough in a small way. Your pa never skimped us on money, though, land alive! I didn’t dream of his havin’ things about him like he has, and I was always for tryin’ to lay up, ’cause I didn’t know how much money he had, and I didn’t know but he’d come to poverty some day. Rich folks do, and I was for savin’, and Susan didn’t object. Susan is a good girl as ever was. And so the red bow is just as nice as ever it was—not a mite soiled nor nothing, and I think it would go lovely with a green silk dress, don’t you?”

“No,” said Ruth, severely and solemnly. Not another word could she have forced her white lips to say, and I don’t know how to explain to you what awful torture this talk was to her. The truth is, to those of you who do not, because of a fine subtle, inner sympathy, understand it already, it is utterly unexplainable.

“Land alive!” said Mrs. Erskine, startled by the brief, explosive answer, and by the white, set lips, “don’t you? Now, I thought you would. You dress so like a picture yourself, I thought you would know all about it, and your pa said you knew what was what as well as the next one.”

Think of Judge Erskine’s aristocratic lips delivering such a sentence as that!

“Now, I had a geranium once, when I was a girl. It was the only pretty thing I had in the world, and I set store by it, for more reasons than one. It was give to me by my own aunt on my father’s side. It was pretty nigh all she had to give, poor thing! They was dreadful poor like the rest of us, and she give me this the very winter she died. I had it up in my room, and it kept a blowing and blowing all winter long—I never see the like of that thing to blow! And I used to stand and look at it, just between daylight and dark. It stood right by my one window, where the last streak of daylight come in, and I used to squeeze in there between the table and the wall to make my button-holes, and when it got so dark I jest couldn’t take another stitch, I’d stand and look at the thing all in blow, and I thought I never see anything so pretty in all my life, and I made up my mind then and there, that a green silk dress, about the color of them leaves, and a red ribbon about the color of them blossoms, would be the prettiest thing to wear in the world. I got the bow a good many years ago, and I was always kind of savin’ on it up, waiting for the dress.” Just here there was the faintest little breath of a sigh. “But, then, if you don’t think it would be the thing, why I’m willing to leave it to you. Your pa said you’d see that everything was ship-shape.”

“I think,” said Ruth, and her voice was hollow, even to herself, “I think that my father’s taste would be a plain, black silk, with white lace at the throat. If you desire to please him, I am sure you will make that choice.”

“Why!” exclaimed Mrs. Judge Erskine, and she couldn’t help looking a bit dismayed. “Land alive! do you think so? Black! why it will make folks think of a funeral, won’t it?”

“No,” said Ruth, “black is worn on all occasions by persons who know enough to wear it.” Then she arose. She had reached the utmost limit of endurance. Another sentence from this woman she felt would have driven her wild. Yet she was doomed to hear one more before she closed the door after herself.

“Well, now, if you honestly think it will be best, I s’pose I’ll agree to it, as your pa seemed to think things must go your way. But I don’t quite like it, jest because it seems kind of bad luck. I don’t believe them notions about black clothes at merry-makings, you know, though when I was a girl folks honestly thought so, and it seems kind of pokerish to run right into ’em. I never would begin to clean house of a Friday—some bad luck was sure to come; and as for seein’ the moon over my left shoulder, I won’t do it, now—not if I can help it. But black silk ain’t so funeral as bombazine and such, and I s’pose—”

Here Ruth slammed the door, and put both trembling hands to her ears, and ran across the hall to the refuge of her own room, and closed, and locked, and bolted her door.

As for Mrs. Erskine, she relapsed of necessity into silence, and for the space of five minutes ceased her rocking and looked meditatively into the glowing grate. Then she arose, and for the second time that morning her speech was heralded by the breath of a sigh, as she said aloud, “I ain’t no ways certain that I can ever make head or tail to that girl.” Then she went to her new and elegant dressing-bureau, and opened a drawer, and drew from under a pile of snowy clothing a little box, and took therefrom, wrapped in several folds of tissue paper, the treasured bow. She had kept it choicely for fourteen years, always with a dim sense of feeling that the time might come when life would so have opened to her that she would be able to add to it the green silk dress, and appear in triumph. Besides, it represented to her so much gratitude and affection, and there was actually on her small, worn, withered face, the suspicion of a tear, as she carefully folded and replaced it. Her audible comment was: “A black silk dress and a white lace bow! land alive!”

CHAPTER V.
SEEKING HELP.

FOR the rest of the day Ruth was in gloom; indeed, I might almost say she was in despair. In a dim, dreary sort of way, she felt that her refuge had failed her. If it really was not going to help her to read in the Bible and pray, what was she to do? Now, I do not mean that she suddenly lost faith in the Bible, or in prayer, but simply that despairing thoughts, like these, ran riot through her brain, and she gave them attention; also, she felt as though any effort to help, or any attempt to like these people—nay, even to tolerate them—was impossible. Mrs. Erskine’s good-natured coarseness of tone and speech, her horrible arrangement of words and phrases, her frequent allusions to “your pa,” in the free, careless tone which indicated a partnership of interest between them, were all so many horrors to the refined, reserved, low-voiced daughter.

“I will just shut myself into my room,” she said, pacing back and forth like a caged lion. “I will not try to associate with them; it can never be done; they can not be improved; there is no hope in that direction: there is nothing to build on. I must just take care of myself, and see to it that I do not sink to their level.”

Carrying out this plan, or, rather, allowing herself to glide along with it, she turned away with almost a shiver from her father’s question, that evening, addressed to her in a low tone, as the family were leaving the dining-room:

“Daughter, shall we try to go to prayer-meeting to-night?”

The first prayer-meeting since this invasion into their home! Ruth had not forgotten it; instead, she had been looking forward all day to that meeting, as a refuge for her storm-tossed soul. Without giving really definite thought to it, she yet felt that there, at least, would be help and comfort; and not once had it occurred to her that the new-comers must be invited to attend. She realized, now, with a throb of pain, that it was this sense of fleeing from their presence which had helped to give pleasantness to the thought of the meeting. Was it possible that “they” must be taken?

“Father, I can’t,” she said, turning and facing him with glowing face and defiant eyes. “I have tried to-day to help, and have been an awful failure. I just feel as though I could not endure it. No, I say, let us stay at home with our misery, and not parade it before a gaping world. No, I am not going to prayer-meeting to-night.”

Her father turned from her, and walked, without another word, to the library, whither, according to the new rules of the house, they went directly after tea, for prayer. Ruth could not help noticing that her father’s tall, handsome form stooped, as though he were bowed with suddenly-added years. The moment those words were spoken, she felt that she would have given worlds to have unsaid them; but to take back what has been said in haste and folly is oftentimes an impossible task. She chose the darkest corner of the library, and felt that, if she could have crouched in it, out of sight forever, it would have been happiness. Her father’s voice, as he read the psalm for the evening, was low and tremulous. He had by no means gotten used to these new duties—had not felt their comfort, nor recognized in them a help. As yet he was in the realm of hard duty. His prayer touched Ruth as no prayer had ever done before. It opened the fountains of tears. On rising from her knees, she turned quickly to the window, to hide her disturbed face, and to determine whether she should follow her father from the room, and apologizing for the hard, unhelpful words which she had spoken, say that, of course, they must go to prayer-meeting. He did not wait for her tardy resolution, but turned at once to his wife:

“Will you and Susan accompany me to our weekly meeting? I feel that we need all the help we can get, and that is one of the sources of supply.”

Susan answered promptly, and with a glad ring in her voice that he could not have failed to notice. She was so glad to hear that this was the evening for the meeting. She had been thinking about it to-day, and wondering whether it were, and whether she could go. As for the mother, she said, hesitatingly:

“Why, yes,” she supposed so. There was nothing to hinder, that she knew of. She was no great hand for going out evenings, though, to be sure, going out in a city, where the walks were good and the streets as light as day, was a different affair from blundering along in the dark, as she had been obliged to do. Susan always went to prayer-meeting; but she hadn’t never went in her life, as she knew of; but then, of course, if he wanted to go, she would go along.

It was not possible, apparently, for Mrs. Erskine to answer a question briefly. She was full of reminiscences. They went to prayer-meeting—“father and mother and daughter.” Ruth said this sentence over after they were all gone—said it as she listened to the sound of their retreating footsteps—her father, and all the mother she had ever known, and their daughter. She was left out! Her father had not given her opportunity to change her mind. He had simply said, as they passed out, “I am sorry, daughter, that you do not feel like accompanying us.” If he had but said, “Daughter, won’t you go?” she would have choked down the tears and answered, “Yes.” But she could not bring her pride, or her grief, to make this concession. She honestly did not know whether to call it pride or grief.

Bitterly sorry was she to miss the prayer-meeting. She began to feel that, even with those two present, it might have helped her. So sorry was she that, had she dared to traverse the streets alone, she would have made ready and followed. While she still stood, looking out drearily, too sad now even for tears, the bell sounded through the quiet house, and, giving little heed to it, she was presently startled by the advent of Judge Burnham.

“Thomas thought no one was in,” he said, coming toward her, after an instant’s surprised pause, “and I ventured to avail myself of your father’s cordial invitations, and come in to consult a book which he has, and I haven’t.”

It was well for Judge Burnham’s peace of mind that he had not come in expecting to see Ruth. She was in the mood to resent such an intrusion, but since it was only books that he wanted, he was welcome. She motioned toward the rows and rows of solemn-looking volumes, as she said:

“Help yourself, Judge Burnham, and make yourself as comfortable as you can. My father’s friends are always welcome to his library.”

Then Judge Burnham said a strange and unexpected word. Standing there, looking at her with those keen, grave eyes of his, thinking, apparently, not of books at all, he said:

“I wish I could help you.”

Something in the tone and something in the emphasis caused a vivid blush to spread over Ruth’s face. She commenced a haughty sentence:

“Thank you; I am sure it is kind; but—” She was about to say, “but, I do not feel in need of help.”

She was stopped by the swift realization that this was not true. She felt, in one sense, in deeper need of help than she had ever done before. Her voice faltered over the words, and finally she stopped, her eyes drooping as they were not wont to droop before others, and those traitorous tears shone in them again. The tearful mood was as foreign to her usual self as possible, and she felt afraid to trust herself to speak further. Besides, what could she say?

Judge Burnham spoke again, earnestly, respectfully:

“I hope you will forgive my intrusion of sympathy, but I do feel for you—perhaps in a way that you can hardly appreciate. There are circumstances in my own hard life that serve to make me in deep sympathy with your present trial. Besides, your father has confided in me fully, and I knew your mother. When I was a boy of fourteen she was a woman, young and beautiful and good. She helped me in a hundred of those nameless ways in which a woman can help a motherless boy. If there was any way in which I could serve her daughter it would give me sincerest pleasure to do so.”

He was so frank and sincere and grave that Ruth could hardly help being sincere also.

“I need help,” she said, raising her eyes for an instant to his, “but I do not imagine that you, or any human being, can give it me. I shall have to get a victory over my own heart before anything can help me. I am ashamed of myself, and disheartened. Things that I mean to do I utterly fail in, and things that above all others I don’t intend to do I drop into, almost of necessity, it seems to me.”

What a pity that this man, who wanted to help, had not been familiar with the old-time cry of the sin-sick soul, “For the good that I would I do not, but the evil which I would not that I do.” But he was not familiar with that book of the law of the human heart. Still he essayed to comfort.

“I think you are too hard on yourself. I told you that your father had made a confidant of me, and among other things he has repeatedly told me what a help and strengthener you were to him. He said that he never would have been able to carry this hard matter through but for your strong, unselfish words. It was of you he thought most, and when you were unselfish he felt that he could be.”

Ruth needed this crumb of comfort and yet it had its bitter side, and brought another rush of tears.

“He will never speak such words again,” she said, and her voice trembled. “I have failed him utterly. To-night he asked me to go to the prayer-meeting, and I refused. I said I could never go out with them anywhere, and that we ought to stay at home and hide our shame.”

And having broken through the wall of reserve to this degree poor Ruth gave way utterly, and dropped into a chair, weeping bitterly. Presently she said:

“I would give the world to be able to take it back again; but I can’t. I should have gone to the meeting to-night—there was no excuse. I have dishonored my Saviour as well as my father.”

Judge Burnham looked down at her in perplexed dismay. No definite purpose had been in his mind, beyond a very strange sympathy for her, and a desire to show it. But he did not in the least know how to deal with tears, nor with trouble which reached to so deep and solemn a place in the heart as this. He was one of those reverent, correct moralists, professing to honor the Bible as a very wise and a very good book, professing to respect religion and honor the name of God; and knowing no more about any of these subjects than that profession indicates when it goes no farther. How was he to comfort one whose bitterest tears were being shed because she had dishonored the Lord? He waited irresolute for a moment, then, as if a sudden and very brilliant thought had struck him, his face brightened.

“If that prayer-meeting would really be a source of help to you, Miss Erskine,” and he tried not to have his tone appear incredulous, though at that very moment he was occupied in wondering what it could possibly do for her, “why not reconsider your decision and attend it? I will see you safely there with pleasure, and I presume your coming would gratify your father in his present mood.”

For, to this man, the religion of his old friend Judge Erskine was simply a “mood,” which he expected to be exchanged presently for some other fancy.

Ruth looked up quickly. Was there possibly an escape from this torture of self-reproach? Was there a chance to show her father that she was bitterly ashamed of herself?

“Isn’t it too late?” she asked, and the eagerness in her voice was apparent.

“Oh, no, I should think not,” and Judge Burnham drew his watch. “I am not very well versed in the ways of these gatherings, but if it were a lecture, or concert, it is not enough past the hour to cause remark. I am quite willing to brave criticism in that respect, if you say so.”

Had Ruth been less engrossed with the affairs of her own troubled heart she would have taken in the strangeness of this offer on Judge Burnham’s part to accompany her to a prayer-meeting. Truth to tell he could have echoed Mrs. Erskine’s statement, that “she hadn’t never went in her life as she knew of.” He smiled now over the newness of his position, and yet he cared very little about it. There were matters in which Judge Burnham had moral courage enough to face the whole world. To appear in a social meeting with Judge Erskine’s daughter was one of them. As for Ruth, true to her nature, she thought nothing about it, but made ready with a speed and an eagerness that would have amazed her attendant, could he have seen her.

So it came to pass that the First Church prayer-meeting again had a sensation. The prayer-room was quite full. Since the revival there had been none of those distressing meetings composed of a handful of the most staid members of the church, but on this particular evening there were more present than usual. There were some who were not in the habit of being seen there, even of late. Shall I venture to tell the reason? The simple truth is, that Dr. Dennis and Marion Wilbur’s wedding-cards were out. As Eurie Mitchell has before told you, many things had conspired to make their change of plans advisable, and so, instead of being married in the front-room of the old western farm-house, according to Marion’s fancy, the ceremony was to take place in the First Church on the following evening, and every member of that church, young and old, large and small, had received a special invitation to be present.

Now, it is a mistake to suppose that general gossip is confined to small villages and towns, where everybody knows everybody’s business better than he knows it himself. I think the experience of others will testify to the truth of the statement that gossip runs riot everywhere. In the larger towns or cities, it runs in eddies, or circles. This clique, or this set, or this grade of society, is, to a man and woman, as deeply interested in what the particular circle are to do, or wear, or be, next, as though they lived in a place measuring three square miles. So, while there were those in this nameless city of which we write, who said, when they heard of the coming ceremony: “Dr. Dennis! Why he is pastor of the First Church, isn’t he? or is it the Central Church? Who is Marion Wilbur? does anybody know?” And while there were those who rushed to and fro through the streets of the city, passing under the shadow of the great First Church, who did not know that there was to be a wedding there, who could not tell you the name of the pastor of the church, nor even whether it had a pastor or not, and who had never heard of Marion Wilbur in their lives, and never would, till those lives were ended, though some of them brushed past her occasionally, there were undeniably those who hurried through their duties this evening, or shook off their weariness, or ennui, or deferred other engagements and made it convenient to go to the First Church prayer-meeting, for no better reasons than a curious desire to see whether Dr. Dennis would appear any different from usual on the night before his marriage, and whether Marion would be out, and whether she could look as unconscious and unconcerned as she always had, and also what she would wear! whether she would cling to that old brown dress to the very last! and whether Grace Dennis would be present, and whether she would sit with Marion as they remembered she had, several times, or where? These, and a dozen other matters of equal importance and interest, had actually contributed to the filling of the seats in the First Church chapel! Well, there are worse absorptions than even these. I am not certain that there was a disagreeable word or thought connected with these queries, and yet how sad a thing to think that the Lord of the vineyard is actually indebted to such trivialities for the ingathering of the workers in his vineyard to consult with him as to the work? Alas! alas! many of them were not workers at all, but drones.

After all, since a higher motive could not touch these people, shall we not be glad that any motive, so long as it was not actually a sinful one, brought them within the sound of prayer and praise? They were there anyway, and the service was commenced, and the hymn that followed the pastor’s prayer was being sung, when the opening door revealed to the surprised gazers the forms of Ruth Erskine and Judge Burnham! Now Judge Burnham was one who would, on no account, have exerted himself to see how Dr. Dennis would appear, or how Marion Wilbur would dress, since none of these motives moved him. The question was, What had?

CHAPTER VI.
FROM DIFFERENT STANDPOINTS.

ALTHOUGH the First Church prayer meeting had gone several steps onward, gotten beyond the region of distressing pauses, wherein the embarrassed people looked at each other and wished something would happen, it was by no means the free, social, enjoyable gathering that a prayer-meeting ought to be. A life-long education of too rigid propriety—in other words, false propriety—is not to be overcome in an hour. Therefore, after those who were more accustomed to occupying the time had filled their space there came a lull, not long, not distressing. Those Chautauqua girls were all present, and any one of them would have led in a hymn rather than let the pause stretch out. But it was long enough for people to wonder whether the hour was not almost gone, and whether there were any others who would get their lips open that evening; and then they heard a strange voice: clear, steady, well-managed, as one accustomed to the sound of her own voice, even in public places, and it belonged to the stranger sitting beside Judge Erskine—none other than his daughter Susan. The words she uttered were these: “Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God, through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Now, if it is your fortune to be a regular attendant at a prayer-meeting where a woman’s voice is never heard, you can appreciate the fact that the mere recitation of a Bible verse, by a “sister” in the church, was a startling, almost a bewildering innovation. Only a few months before, I am not sure but some of the good people would have been utterly overwhelmed by such a proceeding. But they had received many shocks of late. The Spirit of God coming into their midst had swept away many of their former ideas, and therefore they bore this better.

But the voice went on, clear, steady, as well sustained as though it belonged to a deacon in the church. “I have been all day,” it said, “dwelling under the shadow of that verse, ‘Peace with God!’ It expresses so much! Peace is greater than joy, or comfort, or rest. I think the words come to perplexed lives with such power. When we do not see the way clearly; when we are beset with difficulties; when disappointments thicken around us, we can still look up to God and say, ‘Up there, where Father is, it is peace.’ He sees the way plainly and He will lead us right through the thickets to the sunlight of His eternal presence. I felt this verse specially one day. Something occurred in which I had to bear a prominent part. For a time I was perplexed—was not sure what was right—and, afterward, my friends thought that I did not make the right decision, and I felt afraid that perhaps I had not, and it troubled me. Then I rested my heart on this word: ‘justified.’ Not because I have done right; not because my judgment is correct; not because of any act of mine in any direction save that one of trusting in my Lord, justified by faith! I am so glad that however much we may disappoint and try our friends, and our own hearts, in the sight of the great and wise and pure God, we are justified through Jesus Christ.”

Simple words were these, simply and quietly spoken. The speaker had spent all her life in one place and all her Christian life in one church. In that church it had been her custom to give her word of testimony. Sometimes it was a verse of a hymn that she recited, sometimes it was a text of Scripture, sometimes it was a touch of her own experience. She had grown up with the custom. She did not realize that there were any who had not. It did not occur to her that to the ears of the First Church people this might be a strange sound. So there had been no flutter or embarrassment, no self-consciousness of any sort; simply out of the fullness of her heart she had spoken. The effect on those about her was obvious and various. Judge Erskine’s hand, that rested on the knob of his gold-headed cane, trembled visibly; Mrs. Senator Seymour, who sat behind him, looked indignant, and felt that Judge Erskine had had enough to endure before this, but this was really too much! Marion Wilbur, who was present, and who did wear her old brown dress, “sticking to it to the very last,” sat erect, with glowing cheeks and eyes that were bright with excitement. To fully understand her excitement I shall have to tell you about a little conversation she had just before starting for church.

“Marion,” Dr. Dennis had said, as he waited in the stuffy parlor for her to draw on her gloves, “I wish you were a very brave young woman, and liked innovations, and were willing to make a startling one to-night.”

“Which you believe I am not, and will not, I conclude,” she had replied, laughing; and stopping before him with a mock bow, added:

“Thank you; I believe you are correct about part of it, at least. I certainly feel very meek and quiet to-night, whatever I may have been in the past. What do you want done?”

“I want to get rid of a horrible stiffness that is creeping over our meeting. We have been thawed, but not sufficiently; that is—well, Marion, the prayer-meeting doesn’t and never did, meet my ideal. It is not social enough—friendly and familiar enough. I would like to have it a place where we meet together to talk over religious subjects, in exactly the same way that we talk of other matters of interest. I would like, for instance, to ask you as to your opinion of a passage of Scripture, or a hymn; and I should like you to answer as freely as you would if we were sitting with other friends in—say your parlor, for instance.”

The emphasis in this latter sentence brought a vivid blush to Marion’s face, and a little exclamation, not exactly of dismay:

“I think you are in a very startling mood. What would your good pillars in the church say to such innovations, do you suppose? It takes my breath away even to think of such a thing! I would almost as soon arise in the desk, and undertake to preach a sermon.”

“Which is a very different thing,” Dr. Dennis said, stoutly. “But, now, just look at it, Marion. Isn’t that the reasonable way to do? Imagine a party of us meeting to discuss a prospective journey to Europe, or to the Holy Land; and, supposing me to be the leader, imagine all the ladies sitting perfectly mum, and the gentlemen only speaking when I called them by name, as if, instead of a social meeting, where all the people were on the same level, it was a catechetical class, met for examination, with myself for examiner! I don’t believe we have the true idea of prayer-meetings.”

“Perhaps not. But, if I should suddenly say to you, when we are fairly seated in the chapel, ‘Dr. Dennis, what do you think is the meaning of the sentence—Called to be saints?’ what would you think?”

“I should be delighted—positively delighted; and I should proceed to answer you as well as I could; and should like to say, ‘Judge Erskine, isn’t that your idea?’ or, ‘Mrs. Chester, what do you think about it?’ and thus from one to another, freely, familiarly as we would if we were gathered to converse about anything else that was worthy of our attention. That is my idea of a social prayer-meeting.”

“Well,” said Marion, “I don’t believe you will ever realize your idea. For myself, I should just as soon think of attempting to fly. The minute you get seated behind that great walnut box, with those solemn-looking cushions towering before you, I feel as far removed from you as though miles of space divided us.”

“That is just it,” Dr. Dennis said, growing eager. “I tell you, this sense of distance and dignity, and unwise solemnity, are all wrong. The barriers ought to be broken down. How I wish, Marion, that you felt it in your heart to help me. I wish you would open your mouth in that meeting to-night. It would do you and me, and everybody good. We should have made a beginning toward getting nearer to the people. I don’t mean anything formidable, you know. Suppose you should just recite a verse of Scripture—something appropriate to the subject before us? I don’t believe you have an idea of the effect it would have.”

“Oh, yes I have,” Marion said, with an emphatic nod of her head. “I can realize that the effect would be tremendous. I don’t believe you have the slightest idea of it! What effect will it have, if you and I reach the meeting ten minutes past the time?”

Whereupon they went to church. Of course Marion was interested in Susan Erskine’s verse, and Susan Erskine’s comments; not so interested that she felt moved to join her, and contribute of her experience to that meeting—such things need thinking about and praying over—but so interested that her face flushed at the thought that this girl, who was from the country, had more moral courage than she, and was in sympathy with Dr. Dennis’ advanced ideas in regard to prayer-meetings.

As for Ruth Erskine, her head went down on the seat before her, and she kept it bowed during the remainder of the service.

Judge Burnham’s nerves were in turmoil. He could not remember that he had ever in his life before felt such sympathy for the trials of others. This particular form of the trial seemed dreadful to him. The idea that a girl of Ruth Erskine’s refinement, and a man of her father’s position, should be brought thus rudely and offensively before the public, jarred upon him, as he had not supposed that anything outside of himself and his own trials could. He blamed himself for being the unwitting cause of part of the trouble. If he had not suggested to Ruth the possibility of coming to this obnoxious place, she would have been spared this embarrassment. Filling his mind with these thoughts—to the exclusion of anything else that was said—and trying to determine how he should best express his sympathy to this tried girl by his side, he was presently relieved to discover that the people were rising for the benediction, and this—to him—long drawn out trial was over. He had not, however, sufficiently composed his thoughts to venture on any form of address, when Ruth suddenly broke the silence in which they were walking:

“Judge Burnham, I owe you thanks. Your suggestion about the prayer-meeting to-night, and your kind attendance upon me, have helped. That meeting came to my heart like balm. I cannot venture to attempt telling you what it has done for me. Perhaps it would be difficult to make you understand how heavy my heart was; but one sentence spoken there has been repeated to me as a revelation! I am so glad to feel that, for me, there can be peace with God! I have felt so storm-tossed, so bewildered, so anxious to do right, and so sure that I was doing wrong, it has been, at times, difficult for me to determine right from wrong, and, in some things, I have felt so condemned that I was miserable. Now I know what I need—God’s peace—such as only he can give—such as is not interfered with by any outward circumstances. To be justified before him is surely enough. I need not ask for further justification.”

Now, indeed, was Judge Burnham silent from very amazement. Here was this girl, to whom he thought had come an added and excessively embarrassing trial, thanking him for bringing her into it, and actually calling it a help and a joy! He had not the least conception of what she could mean. A strong desire to make her explain herself, if she could, prompted his words:

“Then you were not disturbed with your—with the lady’s prominence this evening?”

“With my sister’s, Judge Burnham. You were right in the first place.”

Whether Ruth was willing to accept the situation for herself or not, she could dignifiedly insist upon others doing it. Whoever her father introduced as his daughter should be received by outsiders as her sister, whether she so received her or not.

“I beg pardon,” said Judge Burnham. “You were not disturbed, then, by the position which your sister took?”

“I didn’t think anything about position. She recited that Bible verse most exquisitely, I thought, and the words which she spoke afterward were strong and helpful; they helped me, and I am glad in my very soul that I heard them. That is the most that I can tell you about it.”