Ruth Erskine's Crosses

by Pansy

CHAPTER XXIII.
WHEREFORE?

NOW, I am afraid you will laugh over the matter which appeared next to Ruth Burnham in the shape of a trial. Yet, if you have not lived long enough in this world to be in sympathy with the little trials, which, in certain states of mind, look large, either your experience is not extensive or your sympathies not large. It was no greater matter than the hair which belonged to Judge Burnham’s daughters. But really if you could have seen the trying way in which they managed to disfigure their heads with this part of their adorning, you would have felt that some action was demanded. Ruth knew exactly how each head ought to be dressed; she could almost see the effect that would be produced by a skillful and easily attainable arrangement. Then where the trial? Why, perhaps, if you are not made up of that cruelly sensitive type of women—and I am sure I hope you are not—it will be difficult to make plain to you how Ruth shrank from touching that hair! Human hair, other than her own was a thing which she desired to keep at a respectful distance. She could admire it, when well cared for, and she did most heartily. But to care for it, to comb and brush and fondle over any person’s hair, was to Ruth, or would have been had she ever been called upon to suffer in that line, a positive martyrdom. Now add to this the fact that this shrinking from the work increased tenfold when it had to do with any person who was not very dear and precious, and possibly you can comprehend why she wore so troubled a face that Saturday evening, and gazed at those hopeless heads opposite her, and wondered how a transformation was to be brought about. She was hopeless as regarded teaching the intricacies of any becoming twist or curl. In time, with patience and with often taking hold and obliging the refractory hairs to lie in their place, it might be accomplished; and here poor Ruth shivered over the horrors of a possible future experience. But to get them ready to appear at church the next morning, without a personal encounter, was not to be hoped for.

This Saturday evening, although the family had been three weeks in their new home, was the first in which they were planning for church. The little church in the village had been closed for a longer space of time than that, undergoing repairs, and the first Sabbath after their marriage Ruth had contrived to plan and work herself into an exhaustive headache that had to be succumbed to and petted all day. The next they had been forced to spend in the city, by reason of having missed the last train out on Saturday. Now here they were on the eve of the third, and Ruth at least had been planning toward the little stone church around the corner. Everything was in readiness. The new dresses and the new bonnets and the new gloves, and all the new and bewildering paraphernalia of the toilet had arrived from the city, the last package only the evening before, and but for that dreadful hair Ruth would have been happy over the thought of the effect to be produced by the next morning’s toilet.

It was Susan who at last, and in an unexpected manner, came to the rescue, just as she had stepped in and rescued Ruth from a hundred trials, both seen and unseen, during the experiences of the last three weeks. She did her part so naturally, too, as one who simply happened along at the right moment, without having understood any special need for it. Perhaps there is no rarer or more perfect way of bearing one another’s burdens than this apparently unconscious one.

They sat in the cheery sitting-room—Ruth would not have it called a parlor—and in no part of the house had the transformation been more complete than in that square, rag-carpeted, paper-curtained, and unhome-like room. Judge Burnham was reading certain business letters that seemed to perplex him. The girls were wishing that they could invent some excuse for escaping early from the room to their own, that they might have another look at all the beauties of their wardrobe, and Ruth was gazing at them with a distressed air and manner, and thinking of hair! Susan, glancing up from her glove-mending, followed the direction of Ruth’s eyes for a moment, then she spoke her thoughts.

“I just long to get hold of your hair.”

The remark seemed to be addressed to the two girls, and was so in keeping with Ruth’s thoughts that she started and flushed, wondering for an instant whether it were possible for Susan to know what they were. The girls laughed, and looked pleased at her interest.