"And I have been on this side since Saturday,'" Eurie answered, significantly. "A great many things can happen in a week."
At this point, Ruth turned and came towards them. She looked quiet and grave.
"It is a year, isn't it? since we stood here together for the first time," she said. "At least I seem to have had a year of life and experience. Do you know, girls, I have something to tell you: I thought to wait until we reached home, but I have decided to-night that I will not. I am sorry that I have not told you before. Marion, don't you know how like a simpleton I talked, a week ago last Saturday night? I want to tell you that I was a fool; and was talking about that of which I knew nothing at all. I want to assure you that there is a safe place, that I know it now by actual experience, I have gone to the mountain and it is sure and safe; and, oh, girls, I want you both to come so much."
"I know the mountain;" Marion said, reaching out, and clasping Ruth's hand. "The name of it is Calvary, it is safe, and it is sufficient for us all. Ruthie, we three are together in this thing."
What those girls said to each other then and there is sacred to them.
But if I could, I would tell you something of the joy they felt.
Flossy still leaned over the railing, a small quiet speck in the moonlight. Marion kept turning her head in her direction. "Our poor little Flossy would not understand much about this experience, I suppose," she said at last; "she is such a child, and yet, I don't know—sometimes I have fancied that she thinks more than we give her credit for. That at least she has lately."
"Let us tell her, anyway," Eurie, said, "we can't know what good it may do. If we had not been so dreadfully afraid of each other, during the last few days, we might have helped each other a good deal; for my part, I have learned a lesson on which I mean to practice."
Ruth looked up quickly, a rare smile in her eyes; she opened her lips to speak to them, then seemed to change her mind and raised her voice: "Flossy!" And Flossy came at her call.
"Come here," Ruth said, withdrawing her hand from Marion's, and winding her arm around the small figure beside her.
"Flossy, the girls have had our very experience all by themselves, and they want to know how long it is since you began to think about this matter for yourself."