CHAPTER IV
THE CLUB GOES VISITING
By sports like these are all their cares beguiled.
—Oliver Goldsmith.
“I DON’T know but I shall have to ask you not to let the children come to their Club this afternoon. I don’t like the noise, and you know almost anything brings on heart trouble,” Miss Virginia Warren said, when she came down to the library the next Friday morning, followed by her niece, carrying two shawls. She spent an hour down-stairs daily, after the rooms had been made excessively warm.
“But, Aunt Virginia, you always stay in your room after three o’clock, and it is so far from the library that you could hardly hear any noise. I will keep the doors shut, though. I should be sorry indeed to disappoint the children,” Ruth Warren replied, quite troubled by her aunt’s words.
“Well, of course the children are of more importance than my feelings,” said Miss Virginia with a sigh. “But even though I don’t hear their noise, knowing they are there, and that I may hear them any minute, gives me cold turns every now and then.” She shivered, as if at the mere thought. “Put that thick shawl over me quickly, Ruth.”
The doctor had many times told Ruth Warren that there was nothing really the matter with her aunt except a strong imagination and a constant fear of illness; he had advised her, too, not to give in too much to her aunt’s notions. So now Ruth said: “I am sorry, Aunt Virginia, that the children’s coming disturbs you. I will ask Sarah to stay in the room with you this afternoon so that you will not feel nervous.”
“Nervous! I am never nervous,” replied Miss Virginia, waving her large white hands excitedly. “But I shall have to have a regular nurse, so that there will be somebody with me all the time.” Then she wept a little, and felt faint, and had to be revived with spirits of ammonia.
Fortunately, however, she was spared further excitement on account of the children’s coming that day. For just before three o’clock, Ben Holt drove up to the house with a large, loose-jointed brown horse and a double-seated sleigh, jumped out, rang the door-bell, and asked for Miss Ruth. He was sitting on a tall carved chair in the hall when Ruth Warren came down, at Sarah’s summons.