"After all your uncle has done for you, I think it is a very little thing to ask," said Mrs. Mayfield in an offended way, addressing Ruth. Then meeting no response, she took a different tone. "You must give it to him, Ruth. I wish you to obey me."
"Oh, Aunt Lillie, I can't." The tears came into Ruth's eyes as she held Hetty more tightly.
"I command you," returned Mrs. Mayfield, haughtily, and then all Ruth's defiance was aroused.
"I won't," she said. Then she started for the door. "I reckon you wouldn't give your child either, to be torn to pieces by a—by a—wicked Thing," she cried as she reached the door.
She hurried up-stairs feeling that here was an occasion which did not demand obedience, yet frightened at her speech. There was not a day when she was not called upon to give up something to Bertie, to sacrifice her pleasures, her time, her possessions to his whims.
"He is younger than you," was always the plea, and Ruth, though not always with a good grace, yielded the point. But here was an issue which she felt was a different one from any that she had been called upon to meet.
"It isn't right; it isn't," she said over and over to herself as she climbed the stairs. "Aunt Hester wouldn't make me do it. I know she wouldn't. Why Aunt Hester loves Hetty and Dr. Peaslee does and Billy, and—why they would think it as bad as throwing a baby to the crocodiles like a heathen mother. I'll have to hide you, Hetty darling, like Moses in the bulrushes or like they had to hide the babies from wicked old Herod. Bertie is just like Herod, so he is. I don't love him one bit, and I am going to write to Aunt Hester, and tell her all about it. Oh, where can I hide you, my darling Hetty, so the wicked evil foe will not seek you?"
Bertie's screams still ascended from the floor below and Ruth could hear his mother trying to comfort him.
"Did that naughty Ruth tease my baby? Wouldn't she let him have the ugly old doll? Never mind, mamma will let Katie take him down-town and get him something nice. What does baby want?"
"Want Ruth's doll," persisted Bertie.