"Hoity-toity! Is she setting herself up as a woman? Well, that does make me laugh. Why, it is but yesterday like since your mother came into this very room, such a pale, young thing, with you in her arms.

She was weak then, with the consumption, that carried her off, burning like fire in her poor, thin cheeks, while you lay in her arms, plump as a pheasant, with those gipsy black eyes full of fire, and a crow of joy on your baby mouth. Ah, me! I remember it so well!"

"My poor young mother asked something of you then, didn't she?" said Ruth.

"Well, yes, she did. I mind it well. She had something on her heart, and came to me about it."

"And that was--"

"About you, child. She knew that she was going to die, and--and I had always liked her, and been friendly, you know."

"Yes, I know that. Father has told me."

"Being so, it was but natural that she should come to me in her last trouble."

"She could not have come to a dearer or kinder soul," murmured Ruth.

"Nonsense, child! She might; but then the truth was she didn't. It was me the poor thing chose to trust. I shall never forget her look that day when she sat down on a stool at my feet, just there by the window, and told me that she knew it was coming death that made her so feeble.

She was looking at you then as well as she could, through the great tears that seemed to cool the heat in her eyes; and you lay still as a mouse, looking at her as if there was cause of baby wonderment in her tears. Then all at once your little mouth began to tremble, and lifting up your arms, you cried out, as if her tender grief had hurt you. That brought the tears into my eyes. So we all sat there crying together, though hardly a word had been spoken up to then. Still I knew what it all meant, and reaching out my arms, took you to my own bosom."

"Bless you for it," murmured Ruth.

"Another baby had slept in that bosom once, and somewhere in G.o.d's great universe I knew that she might find it among the angels, and care for it as I meant to care for you, Ruthy."

"She did! She does! Only that child is so much happier than I am,"

sobbed Ruth, tenderly. "She has all the angels; I only you!"

Mrs. Mason lifted her plump hand, with which she patted the young creature's cheek, and said that she was a good child, and always had been; only a little headstrong, now and then, which was not to be wondered at, seeing it was out of the question that she, though she meant to be a kind G.o.dmother, could altogether fill the place of that sweet, dead mother; she must be at her duties there in "The Rest,"

while Jessup was obstinate, and would keep the child with him.

"And you are all the mother I have now," said Ruth, who had listened with forced patience. "To whom else can I go?"

"Why, to no one. I should like to see man or woman attempt to cheat me out of my trust! I will say this for Jessup, headstrong as he is about having you with him, he has not interfered. When it was my pleasure to have you taught things that only ladies think of learning, he never thought of having a word to say against it; so I had my own way with my own money, and you will know the good of all the learning when you are old enough to go among people, and think of a husband, which must not be for years yet."

Ruth sighed heavily.

"Meantime, my dear," continued the housekeeper, "we must be looking about for the proper person. With the learning we have given you, and certain prospects, we shall have a right to look high. Not among the gentry, though you will be pretty enough and bright enough for most of them, according to my thinking; but there are genteel tradespeople in the village, and they sometimes creep up among the gentry in these times. So who knows that you will not be made a lady in that way?"

"Oh, no! Do not speak of it--do not think of it!" said Ruth, with nervous energy. "I cannot bear that!"

"What a child it is! but I like to see it. Forward young things are my abomination; but you may as well know it first as last, Ruthy. When I promised your dying mother to be a mother to you, it was not in words; but deep down in my heart, I gave you that other child's place.

I am an old woman, and have saved money, which would have been hers, and shall be yours some of these days."

Ruth let her head fall on the kind housekeeper's shoulder, and burst into a pa.s.sion of tears. Again the old woman patted her upon the cheek.

"Why, child, what is the matter? I thought this news would make you happy. Take this for your comfort, my savings are heavier than people think."

"Don't! oh, don't! I cannot bear it," sobbed the girl. "Everybody--that is almost everybody--is far too kind: you above all. Only--only it is not money I want just now."

"But my dear--"

"All the money in the world, if you could give it me, could not be so much as the thing I asked just now," Ruth broke in, made desperate as the subject of her wish seemed drifting out of sight. "I want it so much--so much."

"My child, it is impossible. What would Sir Noel say? What would the Lady Rose say?"

"She has no right. What is it to her?" cried the girl, stung by a sharp pang of jealousy, which overmastered every other feeling.

"Ruth!"

"Forgive me. I am so unhappy."

"Ruth, I do not understand. You do not cry like a child, but as women cry when their hearts are breaking."

"My heart is breaking."

"Poor child! Is it about your father?"

"Yes, oh, yes! My father!"

"But the doctors say he is better."

"He is better; but we fear trouble, great trouble."

"Where? How?"

"Oh, Mrs. Mason, I must tell you, or you will not let me see him. They will try to make out that the young master shot my father."

"They? Who? I should like to meet the man who dares say it, face to face with me."

Ruth shuddered. She had met the man, and his evil smile haunted her.

"It may be that it is only a threat," she said; "but it frightened us, and made my father worse."

"But he knows--surely he knows? What does your father say?"

"The man's rude talk threw him into a fever. He was quite wild, and tried to get up and dress himself, that he might come and see Wa--, the young master, at once."

"Why, the man was crazy," exclaimed Mrs. Mason.

"He seemed like it. I could not keep him in bed, and only pacified him, by promising to come myself. You see now why it is that I must speak with Mr. Walton."

"Yes, I see," observed the housekeeper, now quite bewildered. "But had you not better go to Sir Noel?"

"No! no! My father bade me speak to no one but the young master."

"Well, well! if he knows about your coming, I don't so much mind. Wait a bit, and I will send for Webb, Sir Noel's own man, who is in the young master's chamber night and day. I will have a nice bit of supper served up here, and that will keep him while you can steal into the room without trouble."

Ruth flung her arms around the good woman's neck, and covered her face with grateful kisses.