"Yes," Dolly answered. (It was always Dolly who answered Genevieve; Dolly delighted in it.) "We do lose it at that end of the morning—the raw end, Genevieve. But when we are once up, we remain up, available, fully awake, get-at-able, until midnight; we do not go off and seclude ourselves impregnably for two hours or so in the middle of the day." For Dolly was aware that it was her sister-in-law's habit to retire to her room immediately after her one o'clock dinner, and take a nap; often a long one.
"Do you wish to see something pretty, Genevieve?" said Ruth, giving her the morocco case. "Thank you, Mr. Chase; I have wanted a ring so long; you can't think how long!"
"Have you?" said Chase, smiling.
"Yes. And this is such a beauty."
"Well, to me it seemed rather small. I wrote to a friend of mine to get it; it was my partner, in fact, Mr. Willoughby. I told him that it was for a young lady. That's his taste, I suppose."
"The taste is perfect," said Miss Billy. For poor Miss Billy, browbeaten though she was by almost everybody, possessed a very delicate and true perception in all such matters.
"I have been perfectly happy ever since it came," Ruth declared, as she took the ring, slipped it on her finger, and looked at the effect.
"You make me proud, Miss Ruth."
"Don't you want to be a little prouder?" and she came up to him coaxingly. "I am sure Genevieve has been asking you to go with her to the Colored Home?" This quick guess made Chase laugh. "For it is the weekly reception day, and all her old women have on their clean turbans. The Colored Home is excellent, of course, but it won't fly away; there'll be more clean turbans next week. Meanwhile, I have something very pressing. I have long wanted Miss Mackintosh to make a bust of Petie Trone, Esq. And she won't, because she thinks it is frivolous. But if you will go with me, Mr. Chase, and speak of it as a fine thing to do, she will be impressed, I know; for she has a sort of concealed liking for you." Chase made a grimace. "I don't mean anything fiery," Ruth went on; "it's only a reasonable scientific interest. She is at the barn now: won't you come? For Petie Trone, Esq., is not a young dog any longer. He is more than eight years old," concluded the girl, mournfully.
Genevieve, who had been greatly struck by the ring, glanced at Chase with inward despair, as her sister-in-law made this ineffective conclusion. They had left the dairy, and were standing in the garden, and her despair renewed itself as, in the brighter light, she noted Ruth's faded dress, and the battered garden hat, whose half-detached feather had been temporarily secured with a large white pin.