“Oh, well, if that’s the stand you take, there’s no use reasoning with you.” And with a gesture expressive both of pity and sorrow that she must wash her hands of him completely and forever, Mrs. Welch gathered up her papers and indignantly swept from the room.
When Thurston went away that day he had entrusted Ruth with an apology for Mrs. Welch capable of being expanded, as circumstances might require, to an unlimited degree; for Ruth had explained to him how dear to her mother’s heart her charities were. But he had also given Ruth such sound reasons for his views regarding the people in the region where he had been stationed that, however her principles remained steadfast, the sympathies of the girl had gone out to those whom he described as in such incredible difficulties.
“Ask Larry about Miss Blair Cary,” he said. “Ask him which is the better man, Dr. Cary or Jonadab Leech, and which he’d believe first, that Steve Allen, who is spoken of as such a ruffian, or Hiram Still, the martyr.”
“And how about Miss Dockett?” Ruth’s eyes twinkled.
“Miss Dockett?—Who is Miss Dockett?” The little Captain’s face wore so comical an expression of counterfeit innocence and sheepish guilt that the girl burst out laughing.
“Have you been in love with so many Miss Docketts that you can’t remember which one lived down there?”
“No—oh, the girl I am in love with? Miss Ruth—ah, Dockett wasn’t the name. It began with Wel—.” He looked at Ruth with so languishing an expression that she held up a warning finger.
“Remember.”
He pretended to misunderstand her.
“Certainly I remember—Ruth Welch.”