"She takes such care of me, how can I help it?" he said.
"Aye, truly. It will be hard when you have to part with her, I must say that; but such is human nature. We rear them up, get to loving them like our own hearts, and away they go, building nests for themselves. Her mother did it for you, remember; and so it will be while human nature is human nature."
Jessup heaved a deep sigh, and looked at his daughter with wistful earnestness. She answered him with a glance of tender appeal, from which he turned to the dame with a little gleam of triumph.
"There is the rub, Mrs. Mason. My lass will not listen to leaving her old father, but fights against it like a bird that loves its cage, all the more fiercely now that I am down."
Mrs. Mason wheeled round, and looked at Ruth from under her heavy eyebrows, as if she doubted what the father had been saying.
"Aye, little one, we know better than that," she said. "But I don't quite like this. Cheating a sick man may be for his good; but I don't like it, I don't like it."
"Cheating," faltered Ruth, conscience-stricken. "Oh, godmother."
"Well, well, the old saying, that all things is fair in love or war, may be true; but I don't believe it. According to my idea, truth is truth, and nothing can be safer or better, in the long run. Mark this, goddaughter, the first minute you get out of the line of truth, casts you, headforemost, into all sorts of trouble. One must wind and turn, like a fox, to get out of a deceit, if one ever does get out, which I'm not sure of."
Ruth stood before the good housekeeper, as she promulgated this homely opinion, like a detected culprit. Her color came and went, her eyelids drooped, and a weight seemed to settle, like lead, upon her shoulders. This evident distress touched the housekeeper with compassion.
"There, there," she said, "I did not mean to be hard. Young folks will be young folks—ha, Jessup? You and I can remember when more sweethearting was done on the sly than we should like to own up to; and young Storms is likely to be heir to the best farm on Sir Noel's estate, though, I must say, he was never much to my liking. These sharp-faced young men never were. Mason was of full weight and tallness, or he never would have fastened a name on me."