"Uncle is giving me a home; I suppose he will give me to wear all that he thinks I need. But I shall have to wear this dress to school, and it will soon not be fit to wear anywhere else."
"It's just too mean for anything, Ruth! I just wish—"
What Miss Cameron wished she did not proceed to explain. She stopped and bit her lip, looking at her friend all the time and nodding. Ruth was busily wiping her eyes and did not notice the very wise expression on Helen's face.
"Look out! here comes Tom," whispered Helen, suddenly, and Ruth made a last dab at her eyes and put away her handkerchief in a hurry.
"Say! ain't you ever going to get that thing done?" demanded Tom. "Seems to me you haven't done anything at all since I was here last."
The girls became very busy then and worked swiftly until the pillow was completed. By that time it was late afternoon and they started homeward. Ruth separated from Helen and Tom at the main road and walked alone toward the Red Mill. She came to the bridge, which was at the corner of her uncle's farm, and climbed the stile, intending to follow the path up through the orchard to the rear of the house—the same path by which she and her friends had started on their little jaunt in the morning.
The brook which ran into the river, and bounded this lower end of Mr. Potter's place, was screened by clumps of willows. Just beyond the first group of saplings Ruth heard a rough voice say:
"And I tell you to git out! Go on the other side of the crick, Jasper Parloe, if ye wanter fish. That ain't my land, but this is."
"Ain't ye mighty brash, Jabe?" demanded the snarling voice of Parloe, and Ruth knew the first speaker to be her uncle. "Who are yeou ter drive me away?"
"The last time ye was at the mill I lost something—I lost more than I kin afford to lose again," continued Uncle Jabez. "I don't say ye took it. They tell me the flood took it. But I'm going to know the right of it some time, and if you know more about it than you ought—"