Ruth did not listen to the subject of these words, but the kindly voice soothed her. This old housewife had been a good friend to her ever since she could remember, and was trying to comfort her now, as if anything approaching comfort could ever reach her life, fearfully burdened as it was. Still, there was soothing in the voice. So the matron, meeting no opposition, went on:
"We must not talk of what is closest to our hearts just yet; but the time will soon come when the old man and I will flit to some smaller home, and you shall have the house all for your two selves. It will be another place then; for Richard can afford to live more daintily than we ever cared for. The garden can be stocked with flowers and made pretty as this at the cottage. The barley-field can be seeded back to a lawn, and that parlor with the oriel window, where the good man stores his fruit, can be made rarely grand with its pictured walls and carved mantelpiece."
Still Ruth did not listen; only a fantastic and vague picture of some dream-like place was passing through her mind, which the kind old neighbor was endeavoring to make her understand. Now and then she felt this hazy picture broken up by a jar of pain when Richard Storms was mentioned; but even that hated name was so softened by the loving, motherly voice that half its bitterness was lost.
"Tell me," said the matron, "when will you come? I made everything ready this morning before we left, hoping you would go back with us."
Ruth opened her great sad eyes, and looked into the motherly face bending over her.
"You are kind," she said, "so kind, and you were his dear friend. I know that well enough; but I cannot fix my mind on anything—only this: your voice is sweet; you are good, and wish me to do something that I cannot think of yet. Let me rest; my eyes ache with heaviness. I have no strength for anything. This is a sad place, and I am sad like the rest; if you would leave me now, in all kindness I ask it; perhaps the good God might permit me to sleep. Since the night he died I have been fearfully awake, sitting by him, you know. Now—now I would like to be alone, quite alone. There is something I wish to ask of God."
Mrs. Storms yielded to this sad pleading, laid the girl's hands into her lap, kissed her forehead and went away, thinking, in her motherly innocence:
"The child is worn out, dazed with her great sorrow. I can do nothing with her; but Richard will be going to the cottage, and she loves him. Ah, who could help it, now that he is so manly and has given up the ways that we dreaded might turn to evil! She will listen to him, then John and I will have a daughter."