“But will she want to be in a club with little girls?” asked Alice anxiously.
“I think she will,” returned Betty.
“Perhaps she will be president,” suggested Alice, who was a born peacemaker.
“Maybe she will name the club for us,” put in Elsa, raising her head. The flash of sensitiveness had died out of her violet-gray eyes.
“Come on, then! Let’s ask her now,” said Betty; and in another moment the three girls had slipped on their coats and were running toward the Warrens’ house.
The Warren family was a small one now; only Miss Ruth and a maiden aunt lived in the old home-stead. There had always been some one for Ruth Warren to devote herself to,—first her mother, then her grandmother, next her father; and now the last of her older relatives, this aunt who thought herself so much of an invalid that she seldom came down-stairs. Ruth’s brothers and sisters had married and left the old home; but although Ruth had chosen to remain unmarried, she had a busy life and a happy one, with her home cares and housekeeping, and a large number of nephews and nieces to love. There was a touch of sunshine about her that made other people the happier for knowing her. She was pleasant, too, to look upon, for she had beautiful brown eyes and warm-toned yellow hair. She was girlish-looking, in spite of her thirty years, and she always wore soft, graceful, unrustling gowns.
She had just come, this afternoon, from a luncheon-party, and, finding that her aunt had a caller, she seated herself before the open fire in the library, trying to decide whether or not she would go to Mrs. Wharton’s tea, at five o’clock. “I wish there were something more interesting to do,” she said to herself; “luncheons and afternoon teas are all about alike.”
Old Sarah, the family servant, appeared at the library doorway just then. “Well, Sarah?” said Miss Ruth, looking up at the tall, thin, spectacled woman, whose corkscrew-like curls were bobbing with her displeasure.
“Three little girls to see you,” said Sarah, her lips screwing themselves tight together as if in objection to three little girls coming into the house. “And here they are, chasing right after me,” she snapped out, moving to one side.
Betty, who felt quite at home here, had urged the other children into following Sarah to the library.