“Now it's my turn,” Tommy exclaimed, wasting no sentiment on another's failure. He rushed down the bank and into the shallow water to catch the wishing-boat before it drifted away.
“All the same I'm coming back again,” said Kirkwood, looking at Ruth Mary.
Tommy's wish fared no better than his sister's, but he bore up briskly, declaring it was “all foolishness anyway,” and accused Kirkwood of having “just made it up for fun.”
Kirkwood only laughed, and, ignoring Tommy, said to Ruth Mary, “The game was hardly worth the candle, was it?”
“Was it a game?” she asked. “I thought you meant it for true.”
“Oh no,” he said; “when we try it in earnest we must find a smoother river and a stronger light. Besides, you know, I'm coming back.”
Ruth Mary kept her eyes upon his face, still questioning his seriousness, but its quick changes of expression baffled while fascinating her. She could not have told whether she thought him handsome or not, but she had a desire to look at him all the time.
Suddenly her household duties recurred to her, and, refusing the help of Kirkwood's hand, she sprang up the bank and hurried back to the house. Kirkwood could see her head above the wild-rose thickets as she went along the high path by the shore. He was more sure than ever that Enselman was not the right man.
At supper Ruth Mary waited on the strangers in silence, while Angy kept the cats and dogs “corraled,” as her father called it, in the shed, that their impetuous appetites might not disturb the feast.
Mr. Tully stood in the doorway and talked with his guests while they ate, and Mrs. Tully, with the little two-year-old in her lap, rocked in the large rocking-chair and sighed apologetically between her promptings of Ruth Mary's attendance on the table.