Ruby at School

by Mrs. George A. Paull

"Little daughter, we both love mother, don't we?" asked her father, stroking Ruby's dark hair gently.

"Yes, sir," answered Ruby, with a tremulous voice.

"And we would do anything to help her get well again?"

"Why, of course," Ruby answered again.

"Then we must do some things that are hard, if we really want to help her. You know how sick she has been the last few days. I don't want you to feel as if I was sending you away only as a punishment for running away that night. Perhaps if you had not done that particular thing, I might not have given my consent to this plan, but I am sure you are enough of a little woman to see what a help it will be to mother. If she is to get well again, she needs to have her mind kept perfectly free from worry; and when you are running about with no one to take care of you except Ann, who is too busy to do much for you, she is worrying all the time for fear something may happen to you, or that you may get into some mischief. Now if she knows you are safe at school with Aunt Emma, where you will be well taken care of, and will study your lessons, and try to be good and obedient, then she will feel so much happier about you that it will do more toward helping her to get well than all the medicine in the world. There are some things that I can do for her. I can take care of her, and give her medicine, and see that nothing troubles her in the house, but there is something for you to do that I cannot do. This is to be your share of helping dear mother get well. If you go away bravely, and try to study and be a good girl, so that Aunt Emma can write home in each letter that you are doing just as mother would wish you to do, you will be helping her even more than I will. If you think only about yourself, you will cry about going, and fret to come home, until mother will be troubled about you, and perhaps think it best for you to come home again; but if you think about mother, you will be my own brave little daughter, and then mother will soon be well again, and we will send for our little Ruby, and she will come home wiser and better-behaved than when she went away, and we will all be so happy. I am sure I know which you are going to do."

"I am going to be just as brave as can be," Ruby answered, winking back the tears which had been trying to roll down her cheeks, and rubbing out of sight the great shining one which had splashed down upon Tipsey's soft fur. "Yes, papa, I am going to be just as brave as anything. I won't cry. I won't say one word about wanting to come home in my letters, and I will study so hard that I shall stay up at the head of the class just as I do here, and the teacher will think I am ever so—"

"Be careful, darling," interrupted her father. "I don't want my little girl to think so much of herself. If you go to school thinking that you are going to be so much more clever than all the other little girls, I am afraid you will find out that you are sadly mistaken, and then you will be very unhappy. Don't think of excelling the other girls, but think of doing the very best you can because it is right, and because it will make mother and father happy. I would rather have my little Ruby at the very foot of the class, and have her unselfish and gentle, than have her at the head, with a proud and unlovely spirit. Of course I should be very glad to have my little daughter excel in her lessons, for then I should know that she was studying and trying to improve herself as much as possible, but I don't want to have her as vain as a little peacock over it. And you know, Ruby, that it is generally when you are trusting in yourself that you do something that you are the most sorry for. Pride goes before a fall, you remember."

"I will try not to be proud," said Ruby, penitently. "But you don't know how I like to be praised, papa. It scares Ruthy, and she does n't like it one bit, but I like it from my head down to my feet, I truly do. I like to have people say I am ever so smart, and I don't see how I can help it."

"By trying to forget yourself, dear, and keeping self in the back-ground as much as you can in everything that you do. When you are trying to do anything well, remember that it is only just what you ought to do. God has given you a good memory, and a readiness to learn, and so you ought to do the very best with the powers he has given you. You have no more reason to be vain of them than a peacock has to be vain of his fine tail. And it is better to be lovable than clever, and any one who is conceited never makes the friends that a modest child does. Now promise me that you will try, little daughter, to be gentle and modest, and not come back to us selfish and full of conceit."

"I will truly try, papa," Ruby answered. "That is harder for me to try than to try to learn my lessons or to keep the rules, but I will truly try, and you shall see how brave I will be in the morning when I go away. Why, papa, I am brave this very minute. I could just cry and cry, it makes me feel so full to think that this time to-morrow night you will be here just the same, and I will be ever so far away."