"Oh, yes," she laughed, "I've brought you many a cauliflower."
"And oh, those eggs!" he laughed back.
Again there was a slight pause, and then Annie turned to Ruth with the manner of being bound to get right into the thing she had come to say. "I didn't wait longer, Ruth, because I was afraid you might get away and I wondered,"—this she said diffidently, as one perhaps expecting too much—"if there was any chance of your coming out to make me a little visit before you go back.
"You know,"—she turned hastily to Ted, turning away from the things gathering in Ruth's eyes, "the country is so lovely now. I thought it might do Ruth good. She must be tired, after the long journey—and all. I thought a good rest—" She turned back to Ruth. "Don't you think, Ruth," she coaxed, "that you'd like to come out and play with my baby?"
And then no one knew what to do for suddenly Ruth was shaken with sobs. Ted was soothing her, telling Annie that naturally she was nervous that night. "Ted," she choked, in a queer, wild way, laughing through the sobs, "did you hear? She wants me to come out and play with her baby!"
Harriett got up and walked to the other side of the room. Ruth—laughing, crying—was repeating: "She wants me to play with her baby!" Harriett thought of her own children at home, whom Ruth had not seen. She listened to the plans Annie and Ted and Ruth were making and wretchedly wished she had done differently years before.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Ruth had been with Annie for five days now; the original three days for which she had said she could come had been lengthened to a week, and she knew that she would not want to go even then. For here was rest. Here she could forget about herself as set apart from others. Here she did not seem apart. After the stress of those days at home it was good to rest in this simple feeling of being just one with others. It was good to lie on the grass under the trees, troubled thoughts in abeyance, and feel spring in the earth, take it in by smell and sound. It was wonderfully good to play with the children, to lie on the grass and let the little two year old girl—Annie's baby—pull at her hair, toddling around her, cooing and crowing. There was healing in that. It was good to be some place where she did not seem to cause embarrassment, to be where she was wanted. After the strain of recent events the simple things of these days were very sweet to her. It had become monstrous always to have to feel that something about her made her different from other people. There was something terrible in it—something not good for one. Here was release from that.
And it was good to be with Annie; they had not talked much yet—not seriously talked. Annie seemed to know that it was rest in little things Ruth needed now, not talk of big ones. They talked about the chickens and the cows, the flowers and the cauliflowers, about the children's pranks. It was restoring to talk thus of inconsequential things; Ruth was beginning to feel more herself than she had felt in years. On that fifth day her step was lighter than when she came; it was easier to laugh. Hers had once been so sunny a nature; it was amazingly easy to break out of the moroseness with which circumstances had clouded her into that native sunniness. That afternoon she sat on the knoll above the house, leaning back against a tree and smiling lazily at the gamboling of the new little pigs.