"Do you really think I am self-willed, Guy?"
"Of course I do; it does not require a knowledge of law to decide that."
"How do I show it? I never meant to be so."
"Well, you succeed pretty well if you don't. I should not like to see you make the effort, if that is the case. How do you show it? Why, by thinking you know better than other people. Don't she, Ruth, and acting out her thoughts?"
"You are partly right and partly wrong," was the reply. "Agnes is not in the least self-willed. It is I who may be called that. In this you are wrong. You are right in saying she acts out her thoughts; but you give a wrong reason. It is not because she thinks she knows better than others. She does not trust her own judgment nearly as much as either you or I."
"Now don't you begin to be mysterious, Ruth, if she don't, whose does she trust?"
"The Lord's."
"Oh!" and Guy had no more to say. Agnes could have embraced her sister then. She wanted to say something to Guy about Ruth, because she knew her better than even he or any one could know her. But he was so silent now, perhaps this was not the best time. Guy ate a little, Agnes thought, and she did not feel so hungry after all; so when Ruth had finished she said: "Let me wash the tea things myself to night, Ruth, I have not been doing anything all day. I will be ready in time for church." She plead as eagerly as if asking a great favor, and Ruth amused at her childishness, with a warning about not placing the glasses in too hot water, ran up stairs, little thinking of the effect her words had either upon the one for whom they were spoken, or the one to whom they were addressed.
"If we had Martha Nelson, she could do so much for Ruth when I am at school," thought Agnes. "But the money, where is that to come from?" Turning it over and over in her mind, she could see no possibility of having Martha, but somehow there was an impression that Martha should be with them. On the way to church, she decided to speak to Ruth about it.
"Did you ever have impressions that certain things should be, Ruth, and yet the things seemed impossible?"