"You're all right, Ruth. I'll square Mr. Trupp."
The riders struck Duke's Drive and dropped down into Meads.
"How happy Ernie looks now!" said Bess. "It's delightful to see him."
"Yes," replied her father—"too happy. He's going to sleep again—just what I told you. And when he's well away in the land of dreams IT'll pounce on him once more."
That evening over his coffee Mr. Trupp returned to the subject, which was a favourite with him.
"I always knew how it would be," he said with gloomy complacency.
"Of course," answered Mrs. Trupp, glancing mischievously at Bess.
"Makes him too comfortable," the wise man continued. "Fatal mistake. What he wants is an occasional flick with the whip to keep him up to the mark. We all do."
It was not, indeed, in Ruth's nature to use the whip or inspire the fear which few of us as yet are able to do without. And at present she did not bother much. For at first her beauty and spiritual power were quite enough to hold Ernie. He found in her the comfort and the stay the tree finds in the earth it is rooted in. She was the element in which he lived and moved and had his being. She satisfied his body and his spirit as the sea satisfies the fish which dwells in it. She steadied him and that was what he needed.
The marriage, indeed, proved as successful as are most. That is to say it was not a failure, in that both the contracting parties were on the whole the happier for it. Certainly Ern was: for there was no doubt that he was in love with Ruth, nor that his love was real and enduring.