"I'm going to call the closet with the skeleton in it," whispered Ruth. "We named him the 'Wandering Jew;' we've never seen him, you know. Somebody told us that the key was lost, and then the keyhole, and finally the closet itself, and it must be so; for where that closet was in your day there isn't anything now." During this remark Mrs. "Judge" looked very restless and sorrowful. "I just want to see what a skeleton in the closet is like. I've heard that every family has got one, but they keep them out of sight. Wandering Jew, Wandering Jew," whispered Ruth with suppressed excitement; and almost on the instant the lost closet walked into the room from nowhere. He was quite small; as he walked something rattled in him. The child shivered. Was it the skeleton? and would she see it? Then she remembered that the key and the keyhole were both lost.
"What's in it?" whispered Ruth. And then she noticed for the first time that the lady was weeping. There was a strange silence. Mrs. "Judge" put her hands upon Ruth's head, and looking down pathetically into her eager eyes said gently, "I would rather not put any questions to the Wandering Jew, or try to make him say anything. Let him pass along out of my sight." And Ruth, who was quite awed by the grief of Mrs. "Judge," told the closet to hurry out of sight as soon as possible. So she never knew whether it was blasted hopes or withered love, or the ghost of a chance or the dry bones of scholarship, or something else that was locked in that strange little haunted room.
And now the closets were hurried along as fast as Ruth could name them. But Mrs. "Judge" seemed to have lost her interest. The closet with a skeleton in it had thrown her off her balance. She had little or nothing to say to any of the others; and Ruth herself grew tired, so that she was very glad when they had all made their bows and said their short say, and something else might be done for the entertainment of her company.
III.
The Procession of
Goat,
Dog,
Cat,
Bicycles,
Portraits,
Ruth,
And
The "Little Judge."