“Pit yer trust in the Lord, ma dearie,” the Scotchwoman says reverently. “Ye’ll be in richt gude keepin’ then, an’ them ye love as weel.”
But Ruby only wriggles again. She does not want Jenny’s solemn talk. It is dad she desires. Dad, whom she loves so dearly, and whose little daughter’s heart would surely break if aught of ill befell him.
So the long, long afternoon wears away, and when is an afternoon so tedious as when one is eagerly waiting for something or some one? Jenny goes indoors again, and Ruby can hear the clatter of plates and cups echoing across the quadrangle as she makes ready the early tea. The child’s eyes are dim with the glare at which she has so long been gazing, and her limbs, in their cramped position, are aching; but Ruby hardly seems to feel the discomfort from which those useful members suffer. She goes in to tea with a grudge, listens to her stepmother’s fretful little complaints with an absent air which shows how far away her heart is, and returns as soon as she may to her point of vantage. “Oh, me!” sighs the poor little girl. “Will he never come?”
Out in the west the red sun is dying grandly in an amber sky, tinged with the glory of his life-blood, when dad at length comes riding home. Ruby has seen him far in the distance, and runs out past the gate to meet him.
“Oh, dad darling!” she cries. “I did think you were never coming. Oh, dad, are you hurt?” her quick eyes catching sight of his hand in a sling.
Her father laughs. “Only a scratch, little girl,” he says. “Don’t frighten the mother about it. Poor little Ruby red, were you frightened? Did you think your old father was to be killed outright?”
“I didn’t know,” Ruby says. Her eyes are shining now. “And mamma was frightened too. And when even Dick didn’t come back. Oh, dad, wasn’t it just dreadful—the fire, I mean?”
Black Prince has been put into the paddock, and Ruby goes into the house, hanging on her father’s uninjured arm. The child’s heart has grown suddenly light. The terrible fear which has been weighing her down for the last few hours has been lifted, and Ruby is her old joyous self again.
“Dad,” the little girl says later on. They are sitting out on the verandah, enjoying the comparative cool of the evening. “What will he do, old Davis, I mean, now that his house is burnt down? It won’t hardly be worth while his building another, now that he’s so old.”
Dad does not answer just for a moment, and Ruby, glancing quickly upwards, almost fancies that her father must be angry with her; his face is so very grave. Perhaps he does not even wish her to mention the name of the old man, who, but that he is “so old,” should now have been in prison.