"And what is it now, Miss Ruth?" asked the gentleman when she entered his private office, and shaking hands with her. "Have you come to consult me professionally, or am I honored by a social call?"
"You are almost the best man who ever lived, Mr. Howbridge," laughed Ruth. "I know you are the best guardian, for you let me do mostly just as I please. So I am confident you are going to grant this request——"
Mr. Howbridge groaned. "You are beginning in your usual way, I see," he said. "You want something of me—but it is for somebody else you want it, I'll be bound."
"Oh, no, sir! it is really for me," declared Ruth. "I'd like quite some money."
"What for, may I ask?"
"Of course, sir. I've come to consult you about it. You see, it's the tenants."
"Those Meadow Street people!" exclaimed the lawyer. "Your Uncle Peter made money out of them; and his father did before him. But my books will show little profit from those houses at the end of this year—of that I am sure."
"But, if we have made so much out of the houses in the past, shouldn't we spend some of the profit on the tenants now?" asked Ruth earnestly.
"You are the most practical impractical person I ever met," declared Mr. Howbridge, laughing rather ruefully.
Ruth did not just understand that; but she was much in earnest and she put before the lawyer the circumstances of some of the tenants of the old houses on Meadow Street, as she had heard them from Mrs. Kranz and Maria Maroni.