“Your hair would curl beautifully,” Susan added, addressing the elder sister. “And those wide braids in which heavy hair is arranged now would just fit Minta’s face. Don’t you think so, Ruth?”
“Yes,” said Ruth, promptly, “I am sure of it. But I don’t know that she could get them looped right.”
“Oh yes, she could. It is very easy after one knows how. Girls, I am an excellent barber. Suppose we go up-stairs and try my skill? I can show you so that you can arrange that part of your toilet in the morning in less time than it usually takes.”
This plan was immediately carried out, the three going up-stairs with merry voices, Susan’s cheery one being heard to say:
“Oh, you don’t understand half my accomplishments yet; there are ever so many things I can do.”
“That is a fact,” said Judge Burnham, with emphasis. “She is a very treasure in the house. I used to pity you, Ruth, but, upon my word, so far as she is concerned, I am not sure that there was any room for pity.”
“There was not,” Ruth said, heartily. “It took me a long time to realize it, but she has been from the first day of her coming to our home a blessing to me.”
And so strange are these hearts of ours, touched oftentimes by words or deeds apparently so slight, Ruth felt the little episode of the hair-dressing as something that called forth very tender feeling for her sister. She began to have a dim idea of what a blessing might be hidden in a simple, quiet life, constantly unselfish in so-called little things.
So it came to pass that, on a lovely Sabbath morning, the Burnham family were one and all making ready to appear as a family in the little stone church. The girls had been there, more or less, on Sabbaths, during their lives. Years ago Judge Burnham used to go occasionally, when he felt like it. But it had been many a year since he had been seen inside the unpretending little building. Ruth, of course, had never been, and the circumstances surrounding them all were so new and strange that it was almost like a company of strangers being introduced into home-life together.