During the walk home Ruth was merry as ever, romping with Rupert, chatting with that usually shy lad, Ernest, and planning an afternoon on the shore to collect sea-weeds. But Julia walked slowly beside her mother, so evidently determined to be silent that the rest of the party tacitly agreed to leave her to herself.
Mr. Woburn and his eldest son, Gerald, arrived at Stonegate that afternoon, and Ruth saw them for the first time. She soon felt at home with her uncle, a plain-featured, middle-aged man of business, but with his son she felt wonderfully shy. It seemed hardly possible that the handsome young man with the dark moustache and manly bearing could be her cousin. She had expected to see a boy two or three years older than Will, but still a boy, not a polite and self-possessed young man, who by his way of speaking to her made her feel a very little girl indeed.
"How have you been improving the shining hours, my lad?" was his greeting to Ernest.
"He has been down on the shore collecting shells for Ruth," said Julia mischievously.
"Ernest becoming a lady's man! Dear me! the country cousin is working wonders," he cried in feigned surprise.
Ruth felt the hot blood rushing to her cheeks, though she tried to look as if she had not heard the remark; but it spoilt her pleasure in seeking for shells, and she decided mentally that she should never like Cousin Gerald. The arrival of her brother seemed to have restored Julia's good-humour, and when in the evening he proposed a stroll on the pier she gladly assented, and the whole party set out to hear the band which played there two or three evenings in the week.
Ruth thought that she had never known anything so charming as that evening. It was so pleasant to sit in a sheltered corner listening to the finest music she had ever heard, played by a military band and accompanied by the gentle splash of the waves against the pier; to feel the cool fresh sea-breeze blowing around her, and to see the gay dresses of the ladies as they walked up and down talking to their friends, until by-and-by the quiet stars came out and the silver moon shone upon the scene.
Julia was not contented to sit still and look on; she begged Gerald to let her promenade with him, and for a few minutes he gratified her whim; but Ruth, although she had changed the dress which had proved so obnoxious that morning, did not consider herself to be attired richly enough to mingle with the gay throng that passed and re-passed her in her quiet corner.
"What do you think of Gerald?" asked Julia, when the two girls had retired to their bedroom that evening. "Is he not very handsome?"
"Yes," said Ruth, glad that her cousin had asked a question to which she could give her assent so easily. "But I didn't know that he was so old; I expected he would be a boy."