And that gentleman began to consider himself as almost dismissed from her presence.
“What can I do for you, first?” he asked her, eagerly; “I am not one of those who are afraid of anything, Miss Erskine; in mortal guise, at least. I am going up to see your father, and since you can not go yourself, you might make me your messenger, to say anything that you would say, that you are willing to have me repeat.”
Her eyes brightened. “Thank you,” she said, “it is very pleasant to feel that you do not want to desert us. But I will not trouble papa, until I can tell him that we are arranged somehow, and that he need not worry.”
She went down first to the kitchen regions and summoned the working force, telling them in brief, clear language, what had fallen upon the house, and offering them each two weeks’ wages in advance and good characters. She was young and had not been put to many such tests. They were not “servants in a book,” it appeared, for they every one, eagerly caught at their liberty and were nervously anxious to get out of the plague-stricken house, not even desiring to wait until Ruth could get her pocket-book and make good her word. They were young and ignorant, and in the great outside world they had friends; life was dear to them. Who shall blame them? And yet, I desire to say, just here, that it is not in books only that noble, self-sacrificing exceptions to this form of selfishness are found; I have known kitchens that ought to have glowed with the beauty of the strong, unselfish hearts beating there, through danger, and trial, and harassing toil. It only happened that Ruth Erskine had none of those about her, and, within half an hour after the first word had reached them, she stood alone in her deserted kitchen, trying to get her nerves quiet for the next, and, to her, more trying ordeal. What would those new elements in the household say? Was Mrs. Erskine given to hysteria, and would these startling developments produce an attack? Would they want to get away from the house? Could they be gotten away, quietly, to some safe place? Would Susan be willing to go? How would she take the news? Ruth puzzled her brain some weary minutes in trying to decide just how they would act, and whether she had courage to tell them, and whether it were not altogether possible that Mrs. Erskine might be moved to make such an outcry as should disturb the sick man, up-stairs. At last she gave over the attempt to arrange their actions for them, and went to summon them to the library, with an air of forced calmness and a determination to have this worst feature of the side issues over, as soon as possible.
CHAPTER XII.
THE CROSS OF HELPLESSNESS.
“MY land alive!”