“Ruth will attend to you,” remarked Agnes, in her sternest voice. “You and Tess are going to be punished.”
And punished they were, though Tess protested, with tears, that Uncle Rufus had on his oldest clothes that he wore when he weeded the garden in the rain, adding that he did not mind being wet.
Really, he did not seem to, though, as a matter of fact, he was pretty well soaked. For when the two little girls had been sent up to bed, to have the shades pulled down, without a toy to play with, not even the Alice-doll, and no picture books to look at or stories to read, it was Uncle Rufus who interceded for them and begged them off.
“Look heah, Missie Ruth,” he humbly pleaded when he had on dry garments, “dem young uns didn’t mean no harm, nohow. An’—ha! ha!—I doan mind de wettin’!”
“I know, Uncle Rufus,” answered Ruth, with a smile. “It is very good of you to forgive them and to try to get them off, but they did wrong and they must be punished. If I don’t do something to them they will act worse the next time.”
“Yes’m, Missie Ruth, I knows dat, but I done guess dey has been punished nuff!”
He looked so eager and had such a pleading, loving look on his honest, wrinkled black face, that Ruth could not resist him. She knew how he loved Tess and Dot.
“Very well,” Ruth finally said, “I’ll let them stay in bed half an hour longer, and then you may go up and tell them that you forgive them, Uncle Rufus, and that they may come down just before supper.”
That was perhaps the shortest half hour ever registered on the clock of the Corner House, for it could not have been more than ten minutes after Ruth had remitted the punishment that Uncle Rufus went up to the girls’ room and timidly knocked on the door.
“We can’t come out,” said Tess meekly, in what she doubtless intended to be a martyr’s voice. “You’d better go away!”