"No, L'Hommedieu would do, perhaps."
"Yes, Dolly's plan. Are you doing it for her?"
"Oh," said Ruth, with weary truthfulness, "don't you know that I never do things for Dolly, but that it's always Dolly who does things for me?"
Her husband took her to L'Hommedieu.
She seemed glad to be there; she wandered about and looked at her mother's things; she opened her mother's secretary and used it; she sat in her mother's easy-chair, and read her books. There was no jarring element at hand; Genevieve, beneficent, much admired, and well off, had been living for two years in St. Louis; her North Carolina cottage was now occupied by Mrs. Kip.
Chase had the inspiration of sending for Kentucky Belle, and after a while Ruth began to ride. This did her more good than anything else; every day she was out for hours among the mountains with her husband, and often with the additional escort of Malachi Hill.
One morning they made an expedition to the wild gorge where the squirrel had received his freedom two years before; Ruth dismounted, and walked about under the trees, looking up into the foliage.
"He's booming; he's got what he likes," said Chase—"your Robert the Squirrel; or Robert the Devil, as Dolly called him."
"Oh, I don't want him back," Ruth answered; "I am glad he is free. Every one ought to be free," she went on, musingly, as though stating a new truth which she had just discovered.
"I came out nearly every week, Mrs. Chase, during the first six months, with nuts for him," said Malachi, comfortingly. "I used to bring at least a quart, and I put them in a particular place. Well—they were always gone."