“No, no! I know I am not. There listen; do you not hear steps now?”
“Yes: but how can you be sure they are his?” answered Simeon. “It is so very unlikely, I should have thought of everybody else first?”
Ruth made no answer; but she bounded from the room, and had opened the street-door, regardless of Leah’s entreaties to wait at least till the steps came nearer. A very few minutes more, and all doubts were solved by the entrance of Ruth, not walking, but clinging round her brother Reuben’s neck and almost stifling him with kisses, only interrupting herself to say, “Who was right, Miss Leah and Master Simeon? Ah, you did not have Reuben for long weeks to attend and nurse, as I had, or you would have known his step too.”
“You can love me still, then?” murmured her brother, as only to be heard by her; then added aloud, “my mother should have had the first kiss, dearest; let me ask her blessing, Ruth?”
She released him, though she still held his hand; and hastening to his mother, he bent his head before her.
“Is it too late to ask my mother’s Sabbath blessing?” he said, and his voice was strangely choked. “Bless me, dearest mother, as you used to do.”
The widow rose and, laying her hands upon his head, repeated the customary Hebrew blessing, and then folded him to her heart.
“It is never, never too late for a mother’s blessing—a mother’s love, my Reuben,” she said, her voice quivering with the efforts she made to restrain her emotion. “I could have wished it oftener and earlier asked on the Sabbath eve; but it is yours, my boy, each night and morning, though you hear it not.”
“And will it always be? Mother! mother! will you never withdraw it from me? No, no, you will not. You love me only too, too well,” and abruptly breaking from her, after kissing her passionately, he turned to greet his brothers and sisters.
All met him cordially and affectionately, except perhaps that there was a stern look of inquiry in Simeon’s eyes, which Reuben, from some unexpressed feeling, could not meet; and, looking from him, he exclaimed—