“What a comfort you be, my pretty creetur,” sighed Aunt Alvirah, as she hobbled down stairs. “Oh, my back and oh, my bones! This is going to be a creaky day. I feel the dampness.”
“Don’t you believe it, Aunty!” cried the girl. “The sun’s going to come out and drive away every atom of this mist. Cheer up!”
And she was that way all day; but deep down in her heart there was a very tender spot indeed, and in her mind the thought of giving up Briarwood rankled like a barbed arrow. She would not give it up if she could help. But how ever could she earn three hundred and fifty dollars? The idea seemed preposterous.
Aside from being with Aunt Alvirah, and helping her, Ruth’s homecoming was not at all as she had hoped it would be. Uncle Jabez was more taciturn than ever, it seemed to the girl. She could not break through the crust of his manner. If she followed him to the mill, he was too busy to talk, or the grinding-stones made so much noise that talking was impossible. At night he did not even remain in the kitchen to count up the day’s gains and to study his accounts. Instead, he retired with the cash-box and ledger to his own room.
She found no opportunity of opening any discussion about Briarwood, or about the mysterious Tintacker Mine, upon which subject Aunt Alvirah had been so voluble. If the old man had lost money in the scheme, he was determined to give her no information at first hand about it.
At first she was doubtful whether she should go to Lighthouse Point. Indeed, she was not sure that she could go. She had no money. But before the week was out at dinner one day Uncle Jabez pushed a twenty-dollar bill across the table to her, and said:
“I said ye should go down there to the seaside for a spell, Ruth. Make that money do ye,” and before she could either thank him or refuse the money, Uncle Jabez stumped out of the house.
In the afternoon Helen drove over in the pony carriage to take Ruth to town, so the latter could assure her chum that she would go to Lighthouse Point and be one of Jennie Stone’s bungalow party. They called on Dr. Davison and the girl from the Red Mill managed to get a word in private with the first friend she had made on her arrival at Cheslow (barring Tom Cameron’s mastiff, Reno) and told him of conditions as she had found them at home.
“So, it looks as though I had got to make my own way through school, Doctor, and it troubles me a whole lot,” Ruth said to the grave physician. “But what bothers me, too, is Mercy––”
“Don’t worry about Goody Two-Sticks,” returned the doctor, quickly. “Your uncle served notice on me a week before you came home that he could not help to put her through Briarwood beyond this term that is closed. I told him he needn’t bother. Sam Curtis is in better shape than he was, and we’ll manage to find the money to put that sharp little girl of his where she can get all the education she can possibly soak in. But you, Ruth––”