"Oh, no," said Ruth, though she looked at her inquiringly.
"Because," said Harriett, "I've come to talk to you about something, Ruth."
Ruth's face made her say, "I'm sorry, Ruth, but I'm afraid it's the only chance. You see you're going away day after tomorrow."
Ruth only nodded; it seemed if she spoke she would have to cry out what she felt—that in common decency she ought to be let alone now as any worn-out thing should be let alone, that it was not fair—humane—to talk to her now. But of course she could not make that clear to Harriett, and with it all she did wonder what it was Harriett had to say. So she only looked at her sister as if waiting. Harriett looked away from her for an instant before she began to speak: Ruth's eyes were so tired, so somber; there was something very appealing about her face as she waited for the new thing that was to be said to her.
"I have felt terribly, Ruth," Harriett finally began, as if forcing herself to do so, "about the position in which we are as a family. I'll not go into what brought it about—or anything like that. I haven't come to talk about things that happened long ago, haven't come with reproaches. I've just come to see if, as a family, we can't do a little better about things as they are now."
She paused, but Ruth did not speak; she was very still now as she waited. She did not take her eyes from Harriett's face.
"Mother and father are gone, Ruth," Harriett went on in a low voice, "and only we children are left. It seems as if we ought to do the best we can for each other." Her voice quivered and Ruth's intense eyes, which did not leave her sister's face, dimmed. She continued to sit there very still, waiting.
"I had a feeling," Harriett went on, "that father's doing what he did was as a—was as a sign, Ruth, that we children should come closer together. As if father couldn't see his way to do it in his lifetime, but did this to leave word to us that we were to do something. I took it that way," she finished simply.
Ruth's eyes had brimmed over; but still she did not move, did not take her eyes from her sister's face. She was so strange—as if going out to Harriett and yet holding herself ready at any moment to crouch back.
"And so," Harriett pursued, all the while in that low voice, "that is the way I talked to Edgar and Cyrus. I didn't bring Ted into it," she said, more in her natural way, "because he's just a boy, and then—" she paused as if she had got into something that embarrassed her—"well, he and Cyrus not feeling kindly toward each other just now I thought I could do better without Ted."