Prosperity's child

by Eleanora H. Stooke

"I should think it is worse in the City," was the reply; "everything will be at a standstill soon if the fog continues, and it does not appear likely to lift yet. I had to stop every now and again as I came from the station to make sure I was in the right road, and that delayed me. Ah, here's tea! That's good."

Violet now entered the room followed by Barbara, the maid-of-all-work, who was a rather untidy-looking specimen of her class. She had been with the Wyndhams for more than two years, and had fallen into the ways of the family; she was always a little late with everything, always "in a rush" as she expressed it, but she suited her employers and was good-natured to a fault. Before the advent of Barbara the Wyndhams had never been able to keep a servant for long; but Barbara had settled down comfortably at once, and seemed likely to remain a fixture. She was a little body, with a freckled countenance and the roundest of green eyes, and her cap was generally askew on her sandy hair; but there was a vast amount of energy and strength in her slight frame, and she worked with a will.

Having placed the tea on the table, Barbara retired, and the meal commenced. The children had most of the conversation at first, and gave their father various items of information about their doings during the day. The twins attended a preparatory school for boys, not five minutes walk from their own home, and the girls had not much farther to go. Ruth was not to return to the same school as her sisters after Christmas; for it was only a school for young girls, kept by a lady named Minter, and Ruth was the eldest pupil.

Mr. Wyndham talked of sending her to a boarding-school for a couple of years, but how that was to be managed he did not quite know, and it was Ruth's private opinion that her education, as far as schooling went, would be finished when she left Miss Minter's. That she would not mind, she told herself, if only she could have lessons in drawing and painting—she was devoted to the pencil and the brush, and she would have time to help her mother and Barbara and to try to get things in better order; for, of late, the general untidiness of her home had vaguely troubled her.

By-and-by Mr. Wyndham coughed, and his wife asked him if he had remembered his promise to Ruth and procured some cough mixture.

"Yes," he replied, "the bottle's in the pocket of my overcoat. My cough has not been so troublesome to-day as it was during the night, but I remembered I had said I would get something for it, so I went into a chemist's in the city, and there I met some one whom I had not seen for more than twenty years; you have heard me mention him—Andrew Reed."

"Andrew Reed?" echoed Mrs. Wyndham. "Oh yes, I have often heard you mention him. You went to school with him, and afterwards you saw a good bit of him when he was a medical student. Quite a poor lad, was he not?"

"Yes. He was always one of the best fellows in the world, though, and the straightest. He was of humble birth; his father was only a small renting farmer in Devonshire, who had saved a few hundreds and had the sense to see that by educating his son and letting him follow his natural bent he was doing the best for him that he could. Reed's practising as a doctor in Yorkshire now, and his is the first practice in the place—I heard that some time ago. He has prospered in life and made money."

"Did he recognise you, father?" Ruth asked eagerly.

"Yes. He was in the chemist's shop having a prescription made up when my voice attracted his attention, and he spoke to me. I knew him the minute our eyes met. He seemed as glad to see me as I was to see him, and we went and had lunch together and a long talk about old times."