In a little while my father left us, and then I wished I were again back in my room, for I knew not how to talk. She, too, seemed ill at ease.
"I'm sorry you and your brother are not better friends," she said, after we had been silent a few seconds.
I was surprised at this, and wondered who could have have been talking to her.
"Have you seen Wilfred?" I asked.
"Oh, yes, I have seen him twice. He came yesterday, and again to-day. Your mother was here, too."
"I am glad they have been to see you," I replied, "but I did not know that Wilfred and I were not friendly."
She looked at me, I thought, suspiciously, as though she doubted my words, but did not speak.
Had my mother and Wilfred, I wondered, been saying evil things about me. I hoped not, and yet it might be. Certainly, their conduct towards me had been strange. I would not talk of this, however, and so asked her if she liked my sisters.
"Very much," she replied. "They have been with me every day; and the first two days when I was ill they were with me nearly all the time. I think, I see them coming now."
As she spoke Katherine and Elizabeth entered the room. They were bright, buxom maidens, well-grown and healthy. The latter, though two years younger was quite as well grown as the stranger who had come to live amongst us. Yet there was a difference. Ruth Morton possessed a dignity and a grace which were foreign to both my sisters. Children they all were, pretty they all were, yet the beauty of Ruth Morton was of a different nature. She had been cast in another mould, and thus presented a contrast to my sisters.