Ruth Erskine's Crosses

by Pansy

YOU are to imagine much that was done inside that long, low house on the hill during the next three weeks. A great deal can be done in three weeks’ time. What was actually accomplished would fill a good-sized volume; so it is well that you are to imagine instead of read about it. A great many wheels of progress were started during that very first day—Ruth among the stores, Judge Burnham among the paper-hangers, painters and draymen, Susan in the Erskine attic, sorting out and packing many things that, according to Judge Erskine’s orders, were Ruth’s exclusive property. By the time the five o’clock train received the three, they were tired and satisfied.

Tired though they were, it was as late as midnight before all the household settled into rest. Susan dropped into her place as naturally as though it had been waiting for her all these years. The Ferris family were departed bag and baggage, and the two Burnhams left behind were red-eyed and disconsolate. Why not? The Ferrises were the only friends they had ever known. Susan put a sympathetic arm around one and kissed the other before she had been in the house five minutes, and Ruth remembered with dismay that she had not thought of doing such a thing. And, indeed, if I must tell you the truth concerning her, it seemed almost an impossible thing to do! She had been for so many years in the habit of bestowing her kisses rarely and to such an exceedingly limited number of persons. Then they betook themselves, Susan and Seraphina, to the kitchen. Confusion reigned. So it did all over the house, except in the locked-up purity of Ruth’s two rooms. But before midnight there was a comfortable place for Susan to sleep and most satisfactory preparations in line for a breakfast the next morning.

It was that next morning which gave the two Burnham girls their first touch of a cultured home. There was a little room, conveniently situated as regarded the kitchen, which the instinct of taste had made Ruth select at the first glance as a dining-room. Thither she and Susan repaired early in the evening to make a survey.

“It needs painting,” said Susan, scanning the wood-work critically, “and papering; and then, with a pretty carpet, it will be just the thing. But, in the meantime, it is clean, and we can set the breakfast-table here to-morrow morning, can’t we?”

“If we can get it in here to set,” Ruth answered, in a dubious tone. “It is a long, horribly-shaped table, and none of our furniture will be here, you know.”

“Oh, I see my way out of that. There is a little table in that pantry, or milk-room, or whatever is the name of it, that will do nicely for a dining-table until we get settled; and, Ruth, shall we have some of my muffins for breakfast? You remember Judge Burnham used to like them when we gave them to him occasionally for tea. Oh, girls! I can make delicious muffins, and if you are both down here by six o’clock to-morrow morning I will teach you how, the first thing I do.”

This last to the two bewildered girls, who stood waiting to see what astonishing thing would happen next. As for Ruth, she went up-stairs to that gem of a room, smiling over the strangeness of the thought that Susan was down-stairs in their kitchen, hers and Judge Burnham’s, planning with his daughters to have muffins for breakfast! Also, she thought, with a sense of satisfaction, of the great trunk packed with silver, rare old pieces of her mother’s own, which had been held sacred for her during all these years, and of the smaller and newer trunk containing table drapery, which was a marvel of fineness and whiteness. Both trunks had journeyed hither several days ago, and had this night been opened to secure certain things which Susan’s morning plans had called for.

So it was to the little room that the family came the next morning, with its south window, into which the September sun slanted its rays cheerily. The room itself was carpetless, and the chairs were wooden, and there was no other attempt at furniture. But the table, laid in snowy whiteness, and the napkins large and fine and of delicate pattern, and the silver service gleaming before Ruth’s place, and the silver forks and solid silver spoons, and the glittering goblets and delicate china—for Susan had actually unpacked and washed and arranged Ruth’s mother’s china—to say nothing of the aroma of coffee floating in the air, and mingling not unpleasantly with the whiff of a vase of autumn roses which blushed before Ruth’s plate.

All these things were a lesson in home refinements such as a week of talking would never have accomplished, and which the Burnham girls sat down to for the first time in their lives. It was curious to notice the effect on them. Their conspicuous calicoes and stretched-back hair and ungainly shoes were still painfully visible. But, for the first time, apparently, it dawned upon them that things didn’t match. They surveyed the table, which was as a picture to them, and then, with instinctive movements, essayed to hide their awkward shoes under their too short dresses, and blushed painfully over the impossibility of doing so. Ruth noticed it, and smiled. They would be ready for her hand, she fancied, when she came to an hour of leisure to arrange for them.