He was standing at the time contemplating the patient and tormented bundle.
"Who?"
"Me and the children."
"There's one Above," said Ernie. "He'll see to you."
"He don't most in general not from what I've seen of it," answered Ruth. "What if He don't?"
There was a moment's pause. Then Ern dropped a word as a child may drop a stone in a well.
"Joe."
Ruth caught her breath.
In those days Ernie grew on her as a mountain looming out of the dawn-mist grows on the onlooker. Joe did not even come to see her; and she was glad. For all his virility and bull-like quality, now that the day of battle had come, Ern was proving spiritually the bigger man.
And his very absorbtion in the new venture appealed to Ruth even while it wounded. Ern had been "called" as surely as Clem Woolgar, the bricklayer's labourer, her neighbour in the Moot, who testified every Sunday afternoon in a scarlet jersey at the Star corner to the clash of cymbals. Clem it was true, spoke of his call as Christ; to Ernie it went by the name of country. In Ruth's view the name might differ but the Thing was the same. A voice had come to Ern which had spoken to him as she had not, as the children had not. Because of it he was a new man—"converted," as Clem would say, prepared to forsake father and mother, and wife, and child, and follow, follow.