That lamb was sure to go.”
At which Ruth laughed like a pleased child, but said the bonnet felt so strangely on her head, it would take her a little while to get used to it. Then her curls had always wandered about in such a lazy fashion, what could she do with them?
“Oh, they’re all right,” cried Eva, bringing a little seven by nine mirror that Ruth might look at her own sweet face, framed in by the bonnet, which she did, blushing like a wild rose at the sight of her own delicate beauty.
“Oh Eva, I hardly know myself!”
“Of course you don’t. Come, mother, are you and I strong enough to carry her out? I might have brought one of the men, but somehow I could not bear to have them touch her.”
The two women were about to lift Ruth between them, for the length of the flower-garden was more than she could hope to walk, when Mrs. Smith came through the gate followed by her husband, who approached the house with evident hesitation, which his wife was eagerly reproving.
“Come along, they don’t hold malice, I tell you, besides, they know that you didn’t mean it,” she said. “No wonder you are ashamed of yourself, but that scamp might have imposed on Sampson—no, Solomon—hisself. So just walk in, as if nothing was the matter, and never seem to mind it.”
Smith did walk in, looking humble and confused, but his reception was so frank and cordial that he found no difficulty in offering to carry Ruth to the carriage, which had been the object of his visit. So the girl was taken out triumphantly in the powerful arms of their old neighbor, while the other females followed smiling, chatting, and congratulating each other, like a brood of robins, when the strongest fledgling begins to fly.
Mrs. Smith shook up the cushions which formed a sort of couch in the carriage, on which the gentle girl was placed in a half recumbent position by Smith, while all the neighborhood looked on from doors and windows, wondering what would happen next to that Laurence family, and if they had really made up with Smith, after that affair about the robbery.
There would be no doubt on that subject after that dainty nest of a carriage drove away, for Eva shook hands with Smith before she raised her whip from its socket, and Mrs. Laurence stood talking with him in the most cordial manner by the gate, full ten minutes after it drove off. One of the nearest neighbors heard him say,