Ruby at School

by Mrs. George A. Paull

Ruby stepped through the open door out upon the back porch. It was dark, and the noise of the tree toads and frogs seemed to make it more lonely than she had thought it would be. For a moment she was almost willing to give up her plan and go back to bed like a good little girl, but then she thought of Ruthy, and how she would hate to confess to her the next day that she had given up her plan after all; so she went on. Ruby was not inclined to be timid about anything, so, although it did not seem as delightful as she had imagined it would, yet she was not afraid as she ran down the yard to her little house. She was glad, however, that it was not upon a desert island. It was very nice to know that she was not surrounded by great rolling waves on every side, and that if she wished to go back to her home and her mother she could do so in a very few minutes.

She crept into her hut, and finding the bedclothes rolled herself up in them. Oh, why was n't it as nice as she had thought it would be? Ruby was provoked with herself for wishing that she was back in the house curled up in her own little bed, instead of being out here in the night alone. She would not give up and go back, though, she said over and over again to herself. No; she had said that she would stay out all night, and she meant to keep her word, whether she liked it or not.

If Ruby had only been half as determined to keep her good resolutions as she was to keep her bad ones, she would never have found herself in such scrapes.

She rolled herself up in a little ball and drew the blanket closely about her,—not because she was cold, but because it seemed less lonesome. While she was listening to all the music of a summer's night, she fell asleep, and dreamed a very remarkable dream about sleeping in a nest swung from a cocoanut-tree, with a monkey for a bed-fellow.

In the mean time very unexpected events were taking place at the house. A little while after Ruby's father had gone out to see his patient a carriage drove up from the station with a visitor.

It was Ruby's Aunt Emma, who had come to make a visit of a few days, and who had written to say that she was coming, but had only discovered at the last moment that her letter had not been mailed in time for her brother to receive it before her arrival.

After she had had a little talk with Ruby's mother, she was very impatient to see her little niece.

"I wish I could have reached here in time to see her before she went to sleep," she said.

"I am afraid if she woke up now and found you were here she would not go to sleep again all night," said Ruby's mother.

"I won't wake her, but I will just go and peep at her while she is asleep," said Aunt Emma; and lighting a candle, she followed Ann into the room where Ruby was supposed to be fast asleep in her trundle-bed.