What did we quarrel about? It is a curious thing that I have forgotten how it began. It was some little difference of opinion, such as seldom occurred between us; and then, “what so wild as words are?” We said one thing after another, until, finally, Ruth’s black eyes flashed, and she cried out passionately,—
“I just about hate you, Sue Morrison!”
Then my temper flamed. It was a different kind of temper from Ruth’s,—slower to take fire, but much more sullen and resolute. I loved her as I did my own life, but I hated her also, just then,—if you can understand that contradiction. I looked at her, and I remember I thought, even then, how handsome she was, with the red glow on her cheeks, and her eyes so strangely bright. I could have kissed her for love, or cursed her for hate; but the hate triumphed. Slowly I said,—
“Very well, Ruth Carson. I shall not trouble you any more. I shall never speak to you again, until I see you lie a-dying.”
I don’t know what made me put that last sentence in. I suppose I thought, even then, that I could not have her go out of the world, for good and all, without one tender word from me. When I spoke, Ruth turned pale, and the light died in her eyes. I presume she did not think I really meant what I said; but, at any rate, it startled her. She did not answer. She just looked at me a moment. Then she turned away, and, for the first time in years, she and I walked home, so far as our roads lay the same way, on opposite sides of the street.
“Where is Ruth?” my mother asked, when I went in.
“Gone home, I believe,” was my only answer.
It seemed to me that I could not tell even my mother of this estrangement, which had changed in a day the whole current of my life. Of course, as time went on, she saw that all was different between Ruth and me; but, finding that I did not voluntarily tell her any thing, she ceased even to mention Ruth in my presence.
You cannot think how strange and solitary my new life seemed to me. For the first time since I could remember I felt all alone. I don’t think Ruth thought this unnatural state of things could last. The first day after our quarrel she spoke to me, at school, half timidly. I looked at her, and did not answer. She sighed, and turned away; and again, when school was over, each of us went home alone on our separate path.