Ruth’s brother, Hyacinth, saw “Floy’s” articles floating through his exchanges with marked dissatisfaction and uneasiness. That she should have succeeded in any degree without his assistance, was a puzzle, and the premonitory symptoms of her popularity, which his weekly exchanges furnished, in the shape of commendatory notices, were gall and wormwood to him. Something must be done, and that immediately. Seizing his pen, he despatched a letter to Mrs. Millet, which he requested her to read to Ruth, alluding very contemptuously to Ruth’s articles, and begging her to use her influence with Ruth to desist from scribbling, and seek some other employment. What employment, he did not condescend to state; in fact, it was a matter of entire indifference to him, provided she did not cross his track. Ruth listened to the contents of the letter, with the old bitter smile, and went on writing.
CHAPTER LXV.
A dull, drizzling rain spattered perseveringly against Ruth’s windows, making her little dark room tenfold gloomier and darker than ever. Little Nettie had exhausted her slender stock of toys, and creeping up to her mother’s side, laid her head wearily in her lap.
“Wait just a moment, Nettie, till mamma finishes this page,” said Ruth, dipping her pen again in the old stone inkstand.
The child crept back again to the window, and watched the little pools of water in the streets, as the rain-drops dimpled them, and saw, for the hundredth time, the grocer’s boy carrying home a brown-paper parcel for some customers, and eating something from it as he went along; and listened to the milkman, who thumped so loudly on the back gates, and seemed always in such a tearing hurry; and saw the baker open the lid of his boxes, and let the steam escape from the smoking hot cakes and pies. Nettie wished she could have some of them, but she had long since learned only to wish; and then she saw the two little sisters who went by to school every morning, and who were now cuddling, laughingly together, under a great big umbrella, which the naughty wind was trying to turn inside out, and to get away from them; and then Nettie thought of Katy, and wished she had Katy to play with her, when mamma wrote such a long, long time; and then little Nettie drew such a heavy sigh, that Ruth dashed down her pen, and taking her in her arms and kissing her, told her about,
“Mistress McShuttle,
Who lived in a coal-scuttle,
Along with her dog and her cat,
What she did there, I can’t tell,
But I know very well,
That none of the party were fat.”
And then she narrated the exciting adventures of “The Wise Men of Gotham,” who went to sea in that rudderless bowl, and suffered shipwreck and “total lass of life,” as the newsboys (God bless their rough-and-ready faces) call it; and then little Nettie’s snowy lids drooped over her violet eyes, and she was far away in the land of dreams, where there are no little hungry girls, or tired, scribbling mammas.
Ruth laid the child gently on her little bed, and resumed her pen; but the spell was broken, and “careful and troubled about many things” she laid it down again, and her thoughts ran riot.