Then, with a cry of alarm, they each sprang forward, as Ruth, for almost the first time in her life, nearly succumbed to the weakness of fainting.
Nearly, but not quite. The terrified look in her mother’s eyes, and Uncle Fritz’s sustaining clasp recalled her fleeing senses. “I—I’d like a drink of—water!”
She had it on the instant, and, after she had drunken part of it, her color came back and she was able to speak quite firmly. “It is about as bad as it can be, but lest thee should think it worse than it is, I will try to read them. Fritz, thee should have told me.”
Then she resolutely took hold of the closely written sheets, and, disdaining all Mr. Pickel’s offers of assistance, read them through to the end. Those who were familiar with the varying tones of Ruth Kinsolving’s voice would have judged from it then that she was very deeply moved. Even Uncle Fritz, who should have been so much a stranger, understood it; and had Melville heard her he would certainly have said, “Aunt Ruth means business!”
Poor Mother Amy was almost as much disturbed by the tidings which were so ambiguously conveyed through Octave’s and Content’s stories as her daughter had been; but she was the first to recover her scattered wits. “Then, since no telegram has come, it must have all turned out for the best.”
“It has, dear madam; it has, indeed!” cried Uncle Fritz.
“The best, Mother Amy! Can thee see any ‘best’ even in this?”
“Why, yes, my child. It is best for Melville to have had this chance, this Providential blessing; and it is as well that it should all have been gone through with without thy knowledge. Thee would have worried thyself ill.”
“Humph!” said Ruth; replying to her mother as she had rarely before replied.
Then she turned to Uncle Fritz. “And so thee has known this all along, and did not tell me?”