CHAPTER X
MRS. SNOOKS’ EDUCATION
For the next few days Ruth continued to be the centre of the life of the cottage. All the fun was planned with due regard to her lack of strength. At almost every meal some little extra delicacy appeared beside her plate. Whatever impatience Graham and Jack may have felt over the further postponement of their tramp, they concealed the feeling with remarkable tact. There was little danger however, that the unusual attentions showered on Ruth would turn her head, as she had a counter-irritant in the shape of a firm conviction that she did not deserve any of this spontaneous kindness.
It was a day or two after her unsuccessful attempt to enact the rôle of heroine that Graham arrived at the cottage at an early hour and in a noticeable state of indignation. In spite of Ruth’s protests that she was quite well enough to assist in the work of the morning, the girls had unanimously scoffed at the suggestion, and had forcibly seated her in one of the porch rockers and thrust a late magazine in her hands. But by the time Graham arrived, the magazine had slipped to the floor and Ruth sitting with folded hands, was able to give her brother her undivided attention.
“It’s the most extraordinary thing,” Graham sat down on the steps at Ruth’s feet, and fanned his flushed face with his hat. “Have you missed anything that belongs to you, lately?”
“Why, no! Have you found anything?”
“That’s what I’m going to tell you. To start at the beginning, the first night Jack and I slept at Mrs. Snooks’, we weren’t warm enough. There weren’t many covers on the bed, and in this hilly country the nights are cool, even when the days are pretty warm. So, in the morning, I spoke to Mrs. Snooks, and said we’d like some extra bedding, and she promised to attend to it.”
Ruth’s face had crinkled suddenly into a smile of comprehension, which Graham was too absorbed to notice.
“Well, that night a steamer rug appeared on the bed. It wasn’t exactly a success. You know a steamer rug’s too narrow to cover two people properly. If it was over Jack, I was left out in the cold, and vice versa. We had to take turns shivering. After one of us got to the point where his teeth chattered, he’d snatch the rug off the other fellow and warm up. But it wasn’t till this morning that I took any particular notice of that rug. And Ruth, it belongs to us!”
Graham looked at his sister with an air of expecting her to be greatly surprised. Translating her smile into an expression of incredulity, he began to prove his assertion.
“Yes, I know it sounds absurd, but I’m not mistaken, Ruth. I suppose two rugs might be of the same pattern, but it’s hardly likely they would have the identical ink-spots. Don’t you remember how I spilled the ink on that rug when I was getting over the measles? And down in the corner is part of a tag Uncle John had sewed on, when he borrowed it for his trip abroad. The ‘Wylie’ is torn off but ‘John G.’ is left. And now the question is–”