“Don’t ever say that again, Tommy-boy,” she said. “If I have succeeded, so have you. You don’t know how much you have helped me. Why, I just wouldn’t know how to go on without you!”
“As long as you feel that way about it, Ruth,” said Tom, very sincerely touched, “then I don’t care—a lot—about anything else!”
CHAPTER VII
CHESS GOES ALONG
Despite the fact that she went to bed in a mood of exhilaration and full of eager anticipation for the start of the trip, Ruth had an exceedingly bad night.
She dreamed of Sol Bloomberg all during those hours when she should have been gathering strength for the struggle to come.
She woke at last, heavy-eyed and headachy and with a sense of depression that even the bright sunlight of a glorious morning did little to dispel.
Uncle Jabez was in an unusually crabbed mood and inclined to complain about everything, from the golden eggs, each surrounded by a tempting little island of white, to the aromatic cup of strong coffee.
It was perhaps her efforts to soothe the cranky old man and so make things easier for Aunt Alvirah that dissipated Ruth’s own blue feelings.
At any rate, by the end of breakfast she was all on fire with enthusiasm again and impatiently eager for the sound of Tom’s motor horn.
The sound of the motor horn came just as she was hugging Aunt Alvirah for perhaps the hundredth time and promising her all over again that she would take care of herself and not get killed in a train wreck or fall overboard from a steamer.