CHAPTER XXV.
“BITTER-SWEET.”
A QUESTION which began to press heavily on Ruth’s mind as the days went by was: What should she do when Susan went home?
It began to be apparent that all the details connected with the reconstructed house were completed; and also, that a skillful set of hired helpers were in their places. But it was equally apparent to her heart that she shrank from the thought of seeing Susan pack her trunk and go back to the Erskine homestead; she fitted so perfectly into the family life; she had already acquired such a remarkable degree of influence over the girls. They copied her ways and her words, and it had some time ago become apparent to Ruth that this sister of hers was in every respect worthy of being copied. Even her dress—taking its hints from Flossy Shipley’s sweetly-spoken words, about which Ruth knew nothing—had taken such quietness of tone that, if it was not marked for its beauty, had perhaps higher praise in that it was not noticed at all, but had sunken into the minor place it was expected to fill. Ruth, in thinking the past all over, was amazed at the wholesale way in which she had finally adopted her sister. Just when she began to like her, so well that it was a pleasure to have her company and a trial to think of her absence, she did not know. It seemed to her now as though she had always felt so; and yet she knew that somewhere along the line of her life there must have been a decided change of feeling.
“She is just splendid, anyway!” This was the final verdict. “I don’t care when I began to know it; I know it now. I wish I could have her with me always. If she and father could live out here with us, how nice it would be! Father would like the country; it would rest and strengthen him. But, oh! that woman!” Which two words, spoken with an intensity of emphasis that she allowed only the four walls of her room to hear, always referred to Mrs. Judge Erskine. She was quite as much of a trial as ever. Ruth could not conceive of a possibility of there ever being a time when she should want to see her. So she studied over the problem of how to keep Susan, and, like many another student, found, after a few days, that it was worked out for her, in a way that she would not have chosen.
The news burst like a bomb-shell into their midst, without note or warning. Judge Erskine had lost his fortune! Large though it had been, it slipped out of his grasp almost in an hour.
“The trouble has to do with small-pox and religion!” Judge Burnham said, with something very like a sneer on his handsome face. “I don’t know which development should be blamed the most. During his exile from the office his clerks made some very foolish moves, as regarded investments, etc. And, then, the other disease reached such a form that he was beguiled into putting his name to two or three pieces of paper for others, on the score of friendship—a piece of idiocy that during all his sane years he had warned me, and every other business man who came to him for advice, from being beguiled into; and the result is, financial ruin.”
“There are worse ruins than that!” Ruth said it haughtily; her husband’s criticism of her father jarred.