“No; it is not for me, but for yourself,” said Ruth, who was thinking of a report that Rupert had been associating lately with some very wild young men, and she had it in her mind to ask him not to do so any more. “But, no; I’ll ask you next time I see you, maybe,” she added, after a pause.
“All right; I promise you I’ll do it.”
He said good-by, and galloped away through the dusk.
Ruth stood for some time looking after him, and then turned and entered the house, and went softly to her room.
Ruth did not think it necessary to tell her mother or father of the incidents of her ride, except that Rupert had ridden home with her. She shrank instinctively from speaking even to her mother of what had occurred on the ride. She felt a certain humiliation in the fact that Dr. Still had ventured to address her. Her only consolation was that she knew she had never given him any right to speak so to her. She had never gone anywhere with him except from a sense of duty, and had never been anything but coldly polite to him. She was relieved to hear a few days later that Dr. Still had left the County, and, rumor said, had gone to the city to practise his profession. Anyhow, he was gone, and Ruth felt much relieved, and buried her uncomfortable secret in her own bosom.
CHAPTER XXXIII
BLAIR CARY SAVES A RIVAL SCHOOL
A new cause of grievance against Mrs. Welch had arisen in the County in her conduct of her school near the Bend. Colored schools were not a novelty in the County. Blair Cary had for two years or more taught the colored school near her home. But Mrs. Welch had made a new departure. The other school had been talked over and deliberated on until it was in some sense the outcome of the concert of the neighborhood. Dr. Cary gave the land and the timber. “Whether it will amount to anything else, I cannot say; but it will amount to this, sir,” said the Doctor to General Legaie, “I shall have done the best I could for my old servants.” And on this, General Legaie, who had been the most violent opponent of it all, had sent his ox-team to haul the stocks to the mill. “Not because I believe it will accomplish any good, sir; but because a gentleman can do no less than sustain other gentlemen who have assumed obligations.”