“Can it be possible,” thought Ruth, looking after him, “that he could connive at such duplicity? Was the old lady’s sympathy a mere stratagem to work upon my feelings? How unnecessarily I reproached myself with my supposed injustice to her? Can good people do such things? Is religion only a fable? No, no; ‘let God be true, and every man a liar.’”
CHAPTER LIX
“Is this ‘The Daily Type’ office?” asked Ruth of a printer’s boy, who was rushing down five steps at a time, with an empty pail in his hand.
“All you have to do is to ask, mem. You’ve got a tongue in your head, haven’t ye? women folks generally has,” said the little ruffian.
Ruth, obeying this civil invitation, knocked gently at the office door. A whir of machinery, and a bad odor of damp paper and cigar smoke, issued through the half-open crack.
“I shall have to walk in,” said Ruth, “they never will hear my feeble knock amid all this racket and bustle;” and pushing the door ajar, she found herself in the midst of a group of smokers, who, in slippered feet, and with heels higher than their heads, were whiffing and laughing, amid the pauses of conversation, most uproariously. Ruth’s face crimsoned as heels and cigars remained in statu quo, and her glance was met by a rude stare.
“I called to see if you would like a new contributor to your paper,” said Ruth; “if so, I will leave a few samples of my articles for your inspection.”