“Certainly.”
If Arnold had showed anger, he was man enough not to be ashamed of it; this is one of man’s many lordly rights.
Chapter VII
Mrs. Jules Levice was slowly gaining the high-road to recovery, and many of the restrictions for her cure had been removed. As a consequence, and with an eye ever to Ruth’s social duties, she urged her to leave her more and more to herself.
As a matter of course, Ruth had laid the case of Bob and his neighborhood before her father’s consideration. A Jewish girl’s life is an open page to her family. Matters of small as well as of larger moment are freely discussed. The result is that while it robs her of much of her Christian sister’s spontaneity, which often is the latter’s greatest charm, it also, through the sagacity of more experienced heads, guards her against many indiscretions. This may be a relic of European training, but it enables parents to instil into the minds of their daughters principles which compare favorable with the American girl’s native self-reliance. It was as natural for Ruth to consult her father in this trivial matter, in view of Louis’s disapproval, as it would be for her friend, Dorothy Gwynne, to sally anywhere so long as she herself felt justified in so doing.
Ruth really wished to go; and as her father, after considering the matter, could find no objection, she went. After that it was enough to tell her mother that she was going to see Bob. Mrs. Levice had heard the doctor speak of him to Ruth; and any little charity that came in her way she was only too happy to forward.
Bob’s plain, ungarnished room soon began to show signs of beauty under Ruth’s deft fingers. A pot of mignonette in the window, a small painting of exquisite chrysanthemums on the wall, a daily bunch of fresh roses, were the food she brought for his poet soul. But there were other substantial things.
The day after she had replaced the coarse horse-blanket with a soft down quilt, the doctor made one of his bi-weekly visits to her mother.
As he stood taking leave of Ruth on the veranda, he turned, with his foot on the last step, and looked up at her as if arrested by a sudden thought.