Mrs. Lewknor entered the cottage.
Ruth was sitting in the kitchen, her hands in her lap, dazed.
The lady went over to her.
"It's all right, Ruth," she said gently in the other's ear.
Slowly Ruth recovered and poured the tale of the last twenty-four hours into the ear of her friend. It was the cruelty of her mother-in-law more than anything else that troubled her: for it was to her significant of the attitude of the world.
"That's her!" she said. "And that's them!—and that's how it is!"
Mrs. Lewknor comforted her; but Ruth refused to be comforted.
"Ah, you don't know em," she said. "But I been through it, me and little Alice. See I'm alone again now Ernie's gone. And so they got me. And they know it and take advantage—and Mrs. Caspar, that sly and cruel, she leads em on."
"I think perhaps she's not as bad as she likes to make herself out," Mrs. Lewknor answered.
She opened her bag, took out a letter, and put it in Ruth's hand. It was from Anne Caspar, angular as the writer in phrase alike and penmanship, and in the pseudo-business vein of the daughter of the Ealing tobacconist.