"That's so, M'ria!" the old man shouted cheerfully, as his eyes made out the patch of white apron in the doorway. "It's our Ruth, all right— come to pay us a visit!" He bawled it, at close quarters. This was his way of conveying intelligence to the crazed brain.
Mrs. Josselin, awed by her daughter's appearance—a little perhaps, by her loveliness; more, belike, by her air of distinction and her fine dress (though this was simple enough—a riding suit of grey velvet, with a broad-brimmed hat and one black feather)—withdrew behind her back the hand she had been wiping, and stood irresolute, smiling in a timid way.
It was horrible. Ruth stretched out her arms lest in another moment her mother should bob a curtsy.
"Mother—mother!"
She took the poor creature in her arms and held her, shivering a little as she sought her lips; for Mrs. Josselin, albeit scrupulously clean, had a trace of that strange wild smell that haunts the insane. Ruth had lived with it aforetime and ceased to notice it. Now she recognised it, and shivered.
"Surely, surely," said the mother as soon as the embrace released her.
"I always said you would come back, some day. In wealth or in trouble,
I always told grandfather you would come back. . . . That hat, now—the
very latest I'll be bound. . . . And how is your good gentleman?"
"Mother! Please do not call him that!"
"Why, you ha'n't quarrelled, ha' you?"
"Indeed, no."
"That's right." Mrs. Josselin nodded, looking extremely wise. "Show a good face always, no matter what happens; and, with your looks there's no saying what you can't persuade him to. All the Pococks were good-looking, though I say it who shouldn't: and as for the Josselins—"