“Oh, I’m sorry, Mrs. Beck, but I really can’t!” pleaded Miss Emily quickly. “I promised to help out in the canteen work this afternoon. You know the troop trains are coming through, and Mrs. Martin wanted me to take her place all the afternoon.”
Mrs. Beck’s face expressed dismay. She gave a hasty glance around the rapidly emptying church.
“Oh, dear, I don’t know what I’ll do!” she said.
“Oh, let them do without singing for once,” suggested the carefree Emily. “Everybody ought to learn to do without something in war time. We conserve sugar and flour, let the Italians conserve singing!” and with a laugh at her own brightness she hurried away.
Ruth reached forward and touched the troubled little missionary on the arm:
“Would I do?” she asked. “I never played hymns much, but I could try.”
“Oh! Would you?” A flood of relief went over the woman’s face, and Ruth was instantly glad she had offered. She took Mrs. Beck down to the settlement in her little runabout, and the afternoon’s experience opened a new world to her. It was the first time she had ever come in contact with the really poor and lowly of the earth, and she proved herself a true child of God in that she did not shrink from them because many of them were dirty and poorly clad. Before the first afternoon was over she had one baby in her arms and three others hanging about her chair with adoring glances. They could not talk in her language, but they stared into her beautiful face with their great dark eyes, and spoke queer unintelligible words to one another about her. The whole little company were delighted with the new “pretty lady” who had come among them. They openly examined her simple lovely frock and hat and touched with shy furtive fingers the blue ribbon that floated over the bench from her girdle. Mrs. Beck was in the seventh heaven and begged her to come again, and Ruth, equally charmed, promised to go every Sunday. For it appeared that the wayward pianist was very irregular and had to be constantly coaxed.
Ruth entered into the work with zest. She took the children’s class which formerly had been with the older ones, and gathering them about her told them Bible stories till their young eyes bulged with wonder and their little hearts almost burst with love of her. Love God? Of course they would. Try to please Jesus? Certainly, if “Mrs. Ruth,” as they called her, said they should. They adored her.
She fell into the habit of going down during the week and slipping into their homes with a big basket of bright flowers from her home garden which she distributed to young and old. Even the men, when they happened to be home from work, wanted the flowers, and touched them with eager reverence. Somehow the little community of people so different from herself filled her thoughts more and more. She began to be troubled that some of the men drank and beat their wives and little children in consequence. She set herself to devise ways to keep them from it. She scraped acquaintance with one or two of the older boys in her own church and enlisted them to help her, and bought a moving picture machine which she took to the settlement. She spent hours attending moving picture shows that she might find the right films for their use. Fortunately she had money enough for all her schemes, and no one to hinder her good work, although Aunt Rhoda did object strenuously at first on the ground that she might “catch something.” But Ruth only smiled and said: “That’s just what I’m out for, Auntie, dear! I want to catch them all, and try to make them live better lives. Other people are going to France. I haven’t got a chance to go yet, but while I stay here I must do something. I can’t be an idler.”
Aunt Rhoda looked at her quizzically. She wondered if Ruth was worried about one of her men friends—and which one?