“But some women must go,” Ruth told him gravely. “Why not us?”
“You—— Well, I don’t know about you, Ruth. You seem somehow different. I expect you could look out for yourself anywhere. But Helen hasn’t got your sense.”
“Hear him!” gasped Ruth.
“It’s true,” he declared doggedly. “She hasn’t. Father and I have talked it over. Nell is crazy to go—and I tell father he would be crazy to let her. But it may be that he will go to London and Paris himself, for there is some work he can do for the Government. Of course, Helen would insist upon accompanying him in that event.”
“Oh, Tom!” exclaimed Ruth again.
“Why, they’d take you along, of course, if you wanted to go,” said Tom.
“But I don’t wish to go in any such way,” the girl of the Red Mill declared. “I want to go for just one purpose—to help. And it must be something worth while. There will be enough dilettante assistants in every branch of the work. My position must mean something to the cause, as well as to me, or I will stay right here in Cheslow.”
He looked at her with the old admiration dawning in his eyes.
“Ah! The same old Ruthie, aren’t you?” he murmured. “The same independent, ambitious girl, whose work must count. Well, I fancy your chance will come. We all seem to be on our way. I wonder to what end?”
There was no sentimental outcome of their talk. After all they were only over the line between boy-and-girlhood and the grown-up state. Tom was too much of a man to wish to anchor a girl to him by any ties when the future was so uncertain. And nothing had really ever happened to them to stir those deeper passions which must rise to the surface when two people talk of love.