“Perhaps she is fond of fancy-work,” suggested Flossy, somewhat timidly; whereupon Marion laughed.
“I don’t fancy you are to find a kindred spirit in that direction, my dear little Kittie!” she said, lightly. “No one to glance at Susan Erskine would think of fancy-work, for the whole evening. There is nothing in her face or manner, or about her attire, that would suggest the possibility of her knowing anything about fancy matters of any sort. I tell you her face is a strange one. I found myself quoting to my ‘inner consciousness’ the sentence: ‘Life is real, life is earnest,’ every time I looked at the lines about her mouth. Whatever else she can or can not do, I am morally certain that she can’t crochet. Girls, think of that name—Susan Erskine! Doesn’t it sound strangely? How do you suppose it sounds to Ruth? I tell you this whole thing is dreadful! I can’t feel reconciled to it. Do you suppose she will have to call that woman mother?”
“What does she call her now?”
“Well, principally she doesn’t call her at all. She says ‘you’ at rare intervals when she has to speak to her, and she said ‘she,’ when she spoke of her to me; not speaking disagreeably you know, but hesitatingly, as if she did not know what to say, or what would be expected of her. Oh, Ruth does well; infinitely better than I should, in her circumstances, I feel sure. I said as much to that disagreeable Judge Burnham who keeps staying there, for no earthly reason, that I can see, except to complicate Ruth’s trials. ‘How does your friend bear up under it?’ he asked me, with an insinuating air, as though he expected me to reveal volumes. ‘She bears it royally, just as she always does everything,’ I said, and I was dreadfully tempted to add: ‘Don’t you see how patiently she endures your presence here?’ Just as though I would tell him anything about it, if she tore around like a lunatic!”
“Oh, well, now,” said Eurie, oracularly, “there are worse crosses in life, I dare say, than Ruth’s having to call that woman mother.”
“Of course there are; nobody doubts it; the difficulty is that particular type of cross has just now come to her, and while she doesn’t have to bear those others which are worse, she does have to bear that; and it is a cross, and she needs grace to help her—just exactly as much grace as though there wasn’t anyone on earth called on to bear a harder trial. I never could understand why my burnt finger should pain me any the less because somebody else had burned her entire arm.”
At this point Flossy interrupted the conversation with one of those innocent, earnest questions which she was always in these days asking, to the no small confusion of some classes of people.
“Are these two women Christians?”
“That I don’t know,” Marion answered, after staring at the questioner a moment in a half dazed way. “I wondered it, too, I remember. Flossy Shipley, I thought of you while I sat there, and I said to myself, ‘She would be certain to make the discovery in less time than I have spent talking with them.’ But I don’t know how you do those things. What way was there for me to tell? I couldn’t sit down beside them and say, ‘Are you a Christian?’ could I? How is it to be done?”
Flossy looked bewildered.