"And I shall not, if I can help it, dear. We will not talk of it to-night. I am to see your uncle again. One thing is sure, you shall not leave me unless you are willing to go."
"Then I never will." Ruth pressed her cheek against Miss Hester's. "I am yours, yours, your little girl, and nobody else's. My name is Ruth Henrietta Brackenbury. It is. It is."
"It surely is. Come, do not think about it any more to-night. You shall stay with me always, always, if after your uncle has talked to you it seems to be the thing that you most want to do."
Ruth felt sure that no amount of talking could shake her decision, and, if it depended upon herself, she need have no fears, so she felt comforted. "He is my real uncle then," she said.
"Yes, I think there is no doubt of it. Come, come, you must go to bed. Billy is probably asleep before this."
But though to bed Ruth went, it was not to go to sleep. Her eyes seemed propped wide open. There were a hundred questions she wanted to ask, and she was sure that she could never wait till morning to ask them. She heard the rockers of Miss Hester's chair going squeaky-squeak, squeaky-squeak upon a loose board in the floor. She wondered if she were at work upon the buttonholes she disliked so much, or what she was doing.
After what seemed to her hours of lying still, listening to the monotonous squeak, Ruth crept out of bed and stole to the door. Miss Hester, her head against the back of the chair, her eyes fixed on space was still rocking back and forth. Her hands held no work, her supper dishes stood unwashed. Such a condition of affairs displayed an unusual state of mind. Miss Hester was never idle and to leave one's supper dishes unwashed was a sign that something far beyond the ordinary must be the matter. If it were certain that Ruth was not to leave her adopted mother, why this anxious countenance, these troubled eyes and unsmiling mouth? The child crept nearer.
The slight noise she made aroused Miss Hester. "Why, child," she said, "what are you doing up? You should have been asleep long ago."
"I couldn't go to sleep," Ruth replied. "My eyes would pop open. I counted ever so many, up to a thousand, I think, and I tried to see sheep jumping over a fence, like you did that time you told the doctor you couldn't sleep, but I just wanted to ask you so many questions that I couldn't think of anything else."
"Get my big shawl to wrap around you and come satisfy your curiosity, if that is what is troubling you," said Miss Hester, smiling.