“See and grow up like her, then, little Ruby,” Jack says with one of his bright, kindly smiles. “It’s the best sight in the world to see a brave woman; at least I think so,” adds the young man, smiling down into the big brown eyes looking up into his.
He can hardly help marvelling, even to himself, at the situation in which he now finds himself. How Wat would have laughed in the old days at the idea of Jack ever troubling himself with a child, Jack, who had been best known, if not exactly as a child-hater, at least as a child-avoider. What has come over him nowadays? Is it Wat’s mantle dropped from the skies, the memory of that elder brother’s kindly heart, which has softened the younger’s, and made him “kind,” as Ruby one long gone day had tried to be, to all whom he comes in contact with? For Wat’s sake Jack had first tried to do right; ay, but now it is for a greater than that dear brother’s, even for Christ’s. Like Mr. Valiant-for-Truth of old renown, Wat has left as sword the legacy of his great and beautiful charity to the young brother who is to succeed him in the pilgrimage.
“Jack,” Ruby whispers that evening as she kisses her friend good night, “I’m going to try—you know. I don’t want to disappoint mamma.”
Up in heaven I wonder if the angels were glad that night. God was, I know. And Jack. There is an old, old verse ringing in my ears, none the less true that he who spoke it in the far away days has long since gone home to God: “And they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament, and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever.”
Surely, in the dawning of that “summer morn” Jack’s crown will not be a starless one.
