Ruth Erskine's Crosses

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.


RUTH ERSKINE’S CROSSES.
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.