Here Ruth slammed the door, and put both trembling hands to her ears, and ran across the hall to the refuge of her own room, and closed, and locked, and bolted her door.
As for Mrs. Erskine, she relapsed of necessity into silence, and for the space of five minutes ceased her rocking and looked meditatively into the glowing grate. Then she arose, and for the second time that morning her speech was heralded by the breath of a sigh, as she said aloud, “I ain’t no ways certain that I can ever make head or tail to that girl.” Then she went to her new and elegant dressing-bureau, and opened a drawer, and drew from under a pile of snowy clothing a little box, and took therefrom, wrapped in several folds of tissue paper, the treasured bow. She had kept it choicely for fourteen years, always with a dim sense of feeling that the time might come when life would so have opened to her that she would be able to add to it the green silk dress, and appear in triumph. Besides, it represented to her so much gratitude and affection, and there was actually on her small, worn, withered face, the suspicion of a tear, as she carefully folded and replaced it. Her audible comment was: “A black silk dress and a white lace bow! land alive!”
CHAPTER V.
SEEKING HELP.
FOR the rest of the day Ruth was in gloom; indeed, I might almost say she was in despair. In a dim, dreary sort of way, she felt that her refuge had failed her. If it really was not going to help her to read in the Bible and pray, what was she to do? Now, I do not mean that she suddenly lost faith in the Bible, or in prayer, but simply that despairing thoughts, like these, ran riot through her brain, and she gave them attention; also, she felt as though any effort to help, or any attempt to like these people—nay, even to tolerate them—was impossible. Mrs. Erskine’s good-natured coarseness of tone and speech, her horrible arrangement of words and phrases, her frequent allusions to “your pa,” in the free, careless tone which indicated a partnership of interest between them, were all so many horrors to the refined, reserved, low-voiced daughter.
“I will just shut myself into my room,” she said, pacing back and forth like a caged lion. “I will not try to associate with them; it can never be done; they can not be improved; there is no hope in that direction: there is nothing to build on. I must just take care of myself, and see to it that I do not sink to their level.”
Carrying out this plan, or, rather, allowing herself to glide along with it, she turned away with almost a shiver from her father’s question, that evening, addressed to her in a low tone, as the family were leaving the dining-room: