“I think I can make you love it again for mine.” Ruth said the words gently, with a tender intonation that was very pleasant to hear, and that not many people heard from her. Judge Burnham was aware of it, and his grave face brightened a little. He reached after her hand, and held it within his own, and the pressure he gave it said what he could not speak. So they went up the steps of that low porch with lighter hearts, after all, than had seemed possible.
The door at the end of that porch opened directly into the front room, or “keeping room,” as, in the parlance of that region of country, it was called, though Ruth did not know it. The opening of that door was a revelation to her. She had never been in a real country room before. There were green paper shades to the windows, worn with years, and faded; and little twinkling rays of the summer sunshine pushed in through innumerable tiny holes, which holes, curiously enough, Ruth saw and remembered, and associated forever after with that hour and moment. There was a rag carpet on the floor, of dingy colors and uneven weaving. Ruth did not even know the name of that style of carpet, but she knew it was peculiar. There were cane-seated chairs, standing in solemn rows at proper intervals. There was a square table or “stand,” if she had but known the proper name for it, covered with a red cotton cloth having a gay border and fringed edges. There was a wooden chair or two, shrinking back from contact with the “smarter” cane-seated ones; and there was a large, old-fashioned, high-backed wooden rocker, covered back and arms and sides, with a gay patch-work cover, aglow with red and green and yellow, and it seemed, to poor Ruth, a hundred other dazzling colors, and the whole effect reminded her forcibly of Mrs. Judge Erskine!
Now, you have a list of every article of furniture which this large room contained. No, I forget the mantle-piece, though Ruth did not. It was long and deep and high, and was adorned with a curious picture or two, which would bear studying before you could be sure what they were, and with two large, bright, brass candlesticks, and a tray and snuffers. Also, in the center, a fair-sized kerosene lamp, which looked depraved enough to smoke like a furnace, without even waiting to be lighted! Also, there were some oriental paintings in wooden frames on the wall. Are you so fortunate as not to understand what oriental paintings are? Then you will be unable to comprehend a description of Ruth’s face as her eye rested on them! Judge Burnham was looking at her as her eye roved swiftly and silently over this scene, not excepting the curious paper, with which the walls were hung in a pattern long gone by. He stood a little at one side, affecting to raise an unmanageable window sash. They were all unmanageable; but in reality he was watching her, and I must confess to you that this scene, contrasted in his mind with the elegant home which his wife had left, was fast taking a ludicrous side to him. The embarrassments were great, and he knew that they would thicken upon him, and yet the desire to laugh overcame all other emotions. His eyes danced, and he bit his lips to restrain their mirth. But at last, when Ruth turned and looked at him, the expression in her face overcame him, and he burst forth into laughter.
It was a blessed thing for Ruth that she was able to join him.
“Sit down,” he said, wheeling the gay rocker toward her. “I am sure you never occupied so elegant a seat before. There is a great gray cat belonging to the establishment who usually sits in state here, but she has evidently vacated in your favor to-day.”
Ruth sank into the chair, unable to speak; the strangeness of it all, and the conflicting emotions stirring in her heart fairly took away the power of speech. Judge Burnham came and stood beside her.
“We have entered into this thing, Ruth,” he said, and his voice was not so hard as it had been, “and there are embarrassments enough certainly connected with it, and yet it is a home, and it is our home—yours and mine—and we are together forever. This, of itself, is joy enough to atone for almost anything.”
She was about to answer him, and there was a smile on her face, in the midst of tears in her eyes; but they were interrupted. The door opened suddenly, and an apparition in the shape of a child, perhaps five years old, appeared to them—a tow-headed child with staring blue eyes and wide-open mouth—a child in a very pink dress, not over-clean and rather short,—a child with bare feet, and with her arms full of a great gray cat. She stared amazingly at them for a moment, then turned and vanished.
“That is not mine, at least,” Judge Burnham said, and the tone in which he said it was irresistible.
His eyes met Ruth’s at that moment, and all traces of tears had disappeared, also all signs of sentiment. There was but one thing to do, and they did it; and the old house rang with peal after peal of uncontrollable laughter.