"She cannot comfort me."
"She bade me say that if she were ill or in sorrow, there is no hand from which she would so gladly take comfort as from yours — for the sake, she said, of a mutual friend."
"I have no — friend," said Nina.
"Oh, Nina, am not I your friend? Do not I love you?"
"I do not know. If you do love me now, you must cease to love me. You are a Jewess, and I am a Christian, and we must live apart. You, at least, must live. I wish you would tell the boy that he may take back the basket."
"There are things in it for your father, Nina; and, Nina, surely you will read Rebecca's note?"
Then Ruth went to the basket, and from the top she took out Rebecca's letter, and gave it to Nina, and Nina read it. It was as follows:
|
I shall always regard you as very dear to me, because our hearts
have been turned in the same way. It may not be perhaps that we
shall know each other much at first; but I hope the days may come
when we shall be much older than we are now, and that then we may
meet and be able to talk of what has passed without pain. I do not
know why a Jewess and a Christian woman should not be friends.
| |
| I have sent a few things which may perhaps be of comfort to your father. In pity to me do not refuse them. They are such as one woman should send to another. And I have added a little trifle for your own use. At the present moment you are poor as to money, though so rich in the gifts which make men love. On my knees before you I ask you to accept from my hand what I send, and to think of me as one who would serve you in more things if it were possible. Yours, if you will let me, affectionately, | |
| REBECCA. | |
| I see when I look at them that the shoes will be too big. |
She stood for a while apart from Ruth, with the open note in her hand, thinking whether or no she would accept the gifts which had been sent. The words which Rebecca had written had softened her heart, especially those in which the Jewess had spoken openly to her of her poverty. "At the present moment you are poor as to money," the girl had said, and had said it as though such poverty were, after all, but a small thing in their relative positions one to another. That Nina should be loved, and Rebecca not loved, was a much greater thing. For her father's sake she would take the things sent — and for Rebecca's sake. She would take even the shoes, which she wanted so sorely. She remembered well, as she read the last word, how, when Rebecca had been with her, she herself had pointed to the poor broken slippers which she wore, not meaning to excite such compassion as had now been shown. Yes, she would accept it all — as one woman should take such things from another.
"You will not make Shadrach carry them back?" said Ruth, imploring her.