RUTH'S DECISION.
For the first few moments Ruth felt quite determined not to leave home; but as she thought over the advantages and disadvantages of the plan her resolution wavered. How often she had wished, though vainly, to go to a good boarding-school! and now there was an opportunity for her to have a twelvemonth's education, without the great drawback of living at school among strangers and losing the comforts and freedom of home. It was true that she had only seen her aunt for a short time several years before, and her cousins were quite unknown, except for the short notes she usually received at Christmas, with a present from Julia. Still they were relatives, and would not regard her as a stranger.
There were so many arguments for accepting her aunt's invitation: the pleasure of the sea-side trip, the change, the novelty of living in a town, of having Julia for a companion and many school-fellows of her own age; of exchanging Miss Green's school, with its catechisms and needlework, for a young ladies' college, with its modern plans of study, its classes and professors. And all these inducements had the charm of being new and untried, so that only their agreeable side appeared to view, the other being unknown.
Yet if there were fewer reasons against the plan, they were very weighty, for how would mother contrive to do without her? And how could she bear to live a year without a glimpse of the dear home faces?
"But I only help in the mornings and evenings," she mused, "for I am at school all day, and perhaps I could come home for a few days at Christmas. I'm sure I don't know what to do. I wish father and mother had settled it. It is so difficult to know how to decide."
She did not forget the advice which had been given her—to pray over the matter. Indeed, I doubt if she would in any case have come to a decision without taking counsel of her Heavenly Father, for Ruth had for years been in the habit of carrying her childish troubles and perplexities to the one unfailing Guide.
And yet she was hardly sure that she was a Christian; and although she longed to set her mother's mind at rest upon that point, she could not venture to do so just yet. Like many another child of pious parents, she had been trained to love good and hate evil; she had been taught to pray and to desire to live a Christian life; she had long since begun the never-ending conflict against evil and tried to rule her life and actions by God's Word; and yet she could not tell whether the promptings and impulses towards the Saviour which often came to her heart, were merely the result of the loving sanctified home-influence which had surrounded her from her birth, or if she had indeed become a disciple, though but a feeble one, of the meek and lowly Jesus.
In the quiet calm of a summer day, when the wind scarcely ruffles the waters of the bay, it is difficult to say whether the fair ship riding at anchor will prove herself seaworthy. It is when the storm rises in its fury and the billows dash over her that the testing time comes, and she proves the strength of her bows and the soundness of her timbers, or she sinks a hopeless wreck.
And it remained for Ruth's visit to Busyborough, to test her and prove how strong was her desire to follow Christ. If it were but a weak earth-born feeling, it would soon be upset by the winds of temptation; but if it were indeed of God, although it might be roughly handled and somewhat shaken for a time, it would come forth triumphant at last.
"Well, Ruth, what do you intend to do?" asked her father, as they sat at breakfast the next morning. "Do you intend to go to Busyborough, and find out how ignorant you are, and then set to work to study with all your might, or do you mean to be the pattern eldest scholar at Miss Green's? Do you mean to rub shoulders with others, or are you going to stay at home and fancy yourself a prodigy of wisdom and learning?"
"I think, that if you and mother can spare me, I will go to Busyborough, and rub shoulders with the others," said Ruth, steadily.
"That's right; I am glad to hear it; for although we shall miss you very much, I am sure the change will benefit you. Go and learn all the good you can, and tell us all about it when you come back. Ah! your mother looks grave: I know she rather fears your picking up some fantastical notions and growing to look down on your own people. But I don't fear it. I look forward to seeing my little Ruth again next summer, grown somewhat taller, perhaps, and wiser too, but still always my own Ruth."
"Yes, father," she answered, with something like a sob.
But Will, the eldest brother, who found that his father's speech and Ruth's face were getting too much for his feelings, jumped up and seized his hat, saying in his queer way that he must be off to the hay-field if there was a prospect of showers, and he hoped Ruth would not run away before he came back.
The other members of the family soon dispersed; and although Ruth's departure was for days the all-absorbing topic of conversation, it was generally referred to in a cheery way, and not in what Will called "the sentimental strain."