“Bless your heart, child” (with a good-natured little laugh)! “I’ve rested ever so much. When you get used to it, you can sleep standing up, with a bowl of gruel in one hand, and a bottle of hot water in the other, ready for action. Just as soon as the anxiety was off, I got rest; and, while I was anxious, you know, I lived on that—does about as well as sleep for keeping up strength; I guess you tried it yourself, by the looks of your white cheeks and great big eyes! Land alive! I never see them look so big; did you, Judge? But Susan says you behaved like a soldier. Well, I knew you would. I says, to myself, says I, ‘She is made of the stuff that will bear it, and do her best;’ and it give me strength to do my best for your pa, ’cause I knew you was depending on me. Says I, ‘I’ve got two sides to this responsibility now; there’s the Judge, lying helpless, and knowing that every single thing that’s done for him, for the next month or so, must come through me; and there’s his daughter down-stairs, trusting to me to bring him through;’ and I did my level best.”
And then Ruth shuddered. It was impossible for her to feel anything but repulsion.
At last Susan—wise-hearted Susan—came to her rescue. She had imperative need for “mother” in the kitchen, for a few minutes. Ruth watched eagerly, as she waddled away, until the door closed after her, then turned with hungry eyes toward her father, ready to pour out her pent-up soul, as she never had done before. His eyes were turned toward the door, and he said, as the retreating footsteps were lost to them:
“If you have joy in your heart, daughter—as I know you have—for the restoration of your father, you owe it, under God, to that woman. I never even imagined anything like the utter self-abnegation that she showed. Disease, in its most repulsive, most loathsome form, held me in its grasp, until I know well I looked less like a human being than I did like some hideous wild animal. Why, I have seen even the doctor start back, overcome, for a moment, by the sight! But she never started back, nor faltered, in her patient, persistent, tender care, through it all. We both owe her our gratitude and our love, my daughter.”
Do you know Ruth well enough to understand that she poured out no pent-up tide of tenderness upon her father, after that? She retired into her old silent self, to such a degree that the father looked at her wonderingly, at first, then half wearily, and turned his head and closed his eyes, that he might rest, since she had nothing to say to him.
It was two or three days afterward that she tried again. In the meantime, she had chided herself sharply for her folly. Why had she allowed herself to be so cold—so apparently heartless—when her heart was so full of love? Was she really so demoralized, she asked herself, that she would have her father other than grateful for the care which had been bestowed? Of course he was grateful, and of course he desired to show it, as any noble nature should. After all, what had he said but that they both owed her a debt of gratitude and love?
“So we do,” said Ruth, sturdily. “I should love a dog who had been kind to him.” And then she suppressed an almost groan over the startling thought that, if this woman had been only a dog, she could have loved!
But she was left alone with her father again. He had advanced to the sitting-up stage, and she was to sit with him and amuse him, while Mrs. Erskine attended to some outside matter, Ruth neither knew nor cared what, so that she went away. She was tender and thoughtful, shading her father’s weakened eyes from the light, picking up his dropped handkerchief, doing a dozen little nothings for him, and occasionally speaking some tender word. He was not disposed to talk much beyond asking a few general questions as to what had transpired during his absence from the world. Then, presently, he broke an interval of silence, during which he had sat with closed eyes, by asking:
“Where is Susan?”
“Susan!” his daughter repeated, half startled. “Why, she is in the kitchen, I presume; she generally is, at this hour of the morning. She has had to be housekeeper and cook and I hardly know what not, during these queer days. She has filled all the posts splendidly! I don’t know what you would have eaten but for her.”