Miss Catalpa welcomed the chums delightedly; and they took tea with her on the vine-shaded porch of the old gatehouse, Unc’ Simmy doing the honors in his ancient butler’s coat. It was a very delightful party, indeed, and Helen as well as Ruth went away at last hoping that she would some time see the sweet-natured Miss Catalpa again.
Three days later Mr. Cameron’s automobile deposited Ruth at the Red Mill—her arrival so soon being quite unexpected to the bent old woman rocking and sewing in the cheerful window of the farmhouse kitchen.
When Ruth ran up the steps and in at the door, Aunt Alvirah was quite startled. She dropped her sewing and rose up creakingly, with a murmured, “Oh, my back! and oh, my bones!” but she reached her thin arms out to clasp her hands at the back of Ruth Fielding’s neck, and looked long and earnestly into the girl’s eyes.
“My pretty’s growing up—she’s growing up!” cried Aunt Alvirah. “She ain’t a child no more. I can’t scurce believe it. What have you seen down South there that’s made you so old-like, honey?”
“I guess it is not age, Aunt Alvirah,” declared Ruth. “Maybe I have seen some things that have made me thoughtful. And have endured some things that were hard. And had some pleasures that I never had before.”
“Just the same, my pretty!” crooned the old woman. “Just as thoughtful as ever. You surely have an old head on those pretty young shoulders. Oh, yes you have.”
“And maybe that isn’t a good thing to have, after all—an old head on young shoulders,” thought Ruth Fielding of the Red Mill the night of her return, as she sat at her little chamber window and looked out across the rolling Lumano. “Helen is happier than I am; she doesn’t worry about herself or anybody else.
“Now I’m worrying about what’s to happen to me. Briarwood is a thing of the past. Dear, old Briarwood Hall! Shall I ever be as happy again as I was there?
“I see college ahead of me in the fall. Of course, my expenses for several years are assured. Mr. Hammond writes me that he will take another moving picture scenario. I have found out that my voice—as well as Helen’s violin playing—can be coined. I am going to be self-supporting and that, as Mrs. Parsons says, is a heap of satisfaction.
“I need trouble Uncle Jabez no more for money. But I can’t remain in idleness—that’s ‘agin nater,’ to quote Aunt Alvirah. I know what I’ll do! I’ll—I’ll go to bed!”