Aunt Ruby, who was greatly taken with the fine-lady boarder who made herself so common, entertained her better than she thought, for Miss Custer took a curious interest in most of the people she met, and liked to study them.
Of course Aunt Ruby could not spend time for her own or anybody else's amusement merely: when she got through with the raspberries she went at something else, her loose slippers clattering over the floor back and forth wherever her duty called her. But still, she talked, and Miss Custer sat looking out into the clean-swept back yard with its boxed-up flower-beds blooming with the gayest annuals, and its cooped-up hens with their broods of puffy chickens scratching and picking and chirping outside.
"Have Doctor Ebling and Miss Stanley been long engaged?" Miss Custer asked, the conversation having somehow led up to that query.
"Oh, la! yes," Aunt Ruby answered—"for more'n a year. The way of it was: Ruth's guardian, Mr. Murray, who was a minister, went off to some forrin country several years ago to be a missionary, and left Ruth here to finish her education. He was to send for her to come an' teach in a mission-school if she wanted to go—an' she al'ays said she did—after she'd graduated in the normal. But she came up here to stay a spell after graduatin', an' met Doctor Ebling; an' they took a notice to each other right away, an' were engaged. She wrote to Mr. Murray about it, an' he gave his consent to the marriage. But it couldn't take place just yet, for the doctor had only just begun his practice an' wasn't ready to settle down."
"That is, I suppose, he had not sufficient means to set up housekeeping?" said Miss Custer, smiling.
"Well, perhaps not in the way he'd like," Aunt Ruby returned evasively, not being a gossip in the mischievous sense.
"And your other gentleman-boarder, Mr. Bruce—" began Miss Custer, and then stopped.
"Oh, he's got enough money to set up housekeeping like a king," said Aunt Ruby, feeling that this was safe ground. "If he had anybody to set up with him," she added, and laughed at her own wit.
"But did Miss Stanley really think of going to teach in a foreign mission-school?" Miss Custer asked.
"To be sure she did," said Aunt Ruby. "She's a Christian girl, if ever there was one. You might look the world over, Miss Custer, an' you'd hardly find another girl like Ruth Stanley. She's the same as a missionary right here at home, because she looks out for every poor an' sick body in the town, an' spends half her wages to help them."