"And Nellie?" I questioned.
"Good riddance, I think. She's the bane of my life, and she hasn't a scrap of style. She's been here so long she thinks she can boss me as if she were my mother."
Ruth's chief source of sorrow was the announcement that she couldn't attend dancing-school. That brought the tears and for three days she'd hardly speak a word. When I told her that she ought to be cheerful for Alec's sake, she slammed the door in my face and told me not to preach.
I am afraid Ruth and I aren't very congenial sisters. I try very hard to be helpful and sympathetic, for Ruth, of course, is as motherless as I am. But she's a difficult younger sister. She never wanted me to take her to places when she was a little girl. She hates to be petted. It troubles me a little to think we aren't closer friends, because we each are the only sister in the world that the other has.
It was Ruth who stepped in and upset my whole scheme with Dr. Maynard. She can be dreadfully annoying, and cause as much trouble as any grown-up person I ever knew. It was when I was within ten dollars of the end of my struggle. I had finished the copying, and now I was working Dr. Maynard's initials on about everything that that man owned.
It was on a Saturday afternoon, and Juliet Adams, who had come down from college to spend Sunday with her family (Juliet goes to a girl's big college now), had dropped over to see me. I was sitting by the west window sewing on some things of my own, for of course all Dr. Maynard's work I was careful to do in private. Ruth was upstairs getting dressed to go out to a party with one of her numerous boy-friends. Suddenly, with her hair down her back, and dressed only in her white petticoat and dressing-sack, she appeared in the doorway.
"Got a thimble?" she asked. "I want to baste in a ruching," and without asking leave she grabbed my work-bag that was on the couch. It was open and she caught hold of it in such a way that the contents all went tumbling out on the floor. A dozen new socks done up in balls, on which I had been working initials, rolled out in all directions. The red monogram stared me in the face.
"I'll pick them up," I said hurriedly, but Ruth was too quick for me and she pounced upon them before I could stop her. Very little of importance escapes Ruth.
"W. F. M.!" she exclaimed. "Who's that? W. F. M.! As I live, on every one of them! Who's W. F. M.?" She unrolled one pair. "Men's socks too," she said, holding them up to plain view. "W. F. M.!" Then suddenly she broke into hilarious laughter. "I have it!" she burst out, waving the socks over her head and triumphantly dancing around the room. "William Ford Maynard! W. F. M. William Ford Maynard!"
"Stop, Ruth!" I cried, my old anger beginning to surge up in me. "Stop, I tell you!"