"Dear me! what is this?" exclaimed the Judge. "Where are we?" For it was not the old hall at all. That had been rather short and small. This was long, reaching through the house.
"Why, what has become of my bedroom?" inquired the lady. "They have made it into this hall. And where are all the nice little closets under the stairs? You certainly have given them away. Oh, dear! oh, dear! I'm so sorry."
"I guess you're tired," said Ruth. "It makes you nervous to walk much, doesn't it? Why, yes, I know, because they say you never went up-stairs for ever so many years. Oh, I know what we'll do! You can ride." All this time Mrs. "Judge" was looking about her in a dazed way, quite at sea in respect to her surroundings. For the hall had been completely changed until it appeared about as different as different could be. And the good lady was really shocked.
"Do you see those things under the stairs? They are our bicycles."
And the Judge and his wife gazed with perplexed faces in the direction indicated. There was a whole row of them. Seven, altogether,—full-grown, half-grown, or any size you might wish. It was like a carriage shop.
"I think you might ride one all through the house down-stairs," said Ruth to the lady guest. "Then you wouldn't have to walk."
And as the suggestion was made, Ruth's eyes flashed, and her cheeks grew flushed with excitement. What fun it would be to push the good woman on a bicycle from room to room, and show her the present arrangements of the beloved house. But Mrs. "Judge" was horrified. She clung very closely to her husband, as if she thought that she might have to perch upon one of the machines whether she wished it or not. Her breath came fast and short. Her cheeks grew hectic.
"You don't mean to say that people ride those things!" she finally exclaimed when her first flurry of agitation was past.
"Yes," replied Ruth delightedly; "we all ride 'em."
"Not your father and mother,—the minister and the minister's wife?"