CHAPTER XI.
RESOLVED TUBBS.
Nobody said anything more.
Steenie stood perfectly still, too perplexed to even try to understand what “ruin” meant; till, after awhile, her father lifted his head and released her from this, to her terrible, position. Then she darted from the room and from those tragic faces, as if, by turning her back upon them, she could banish them from her thought.
In the kitchen she found Resolved Tubbs with his Bible on his knee.
Now Resolved was a good man, a really sincere Christian; but Steenie had lived long enough in the house to learn that when Brother Tubbs sat down at midday with his Bible on his knee and his spectacles pulled into place, he was in a state of mind to read Jeremiah only, and ignore the more joyful prophets.
She had come with the gayest of spirits into the astonishing gloom of the household, and she wanted no more dismalness; so she tarried in the kitchen but long enough to catch one sepulchral gleam from Resolved’s uplifted “glasses,” and passed out into the garden where she had seen Mary Jane calmly gathering strawberries.
“Well, it can’t be so awful, I believe, or she wouldn’t be doing that!” thought the troubled child, and hurried forward to the housekeeper’s side.
“Mary Jane! dear Mary Jane! Whatever has happened? What is ‘ruin,’ and who has done it?”