"He told me that it contained every cent he had saved in all these years."

"My!" cried Helen. "Then he must have lost a fortune! He has been a miser for forty years, so they say."

"I do not know about that," Ruth pursued. "He is harsh and--and he seems to be very selfish. He--he says I can go to school, though."

"Well, I should hope so!" cried Helen.

"But I don't know that I can go," Ruth continued, shaking her head.

"For pity's sake I why not?" asked her friend.

Then, out came the story of the lost trunk. Nor could Ruth keep back the tears as she told her friend about Uncle Jabez's cruelty.

"Oh, oh, oh!" cried Helen, almost weeping herself. "The mean, mean thing! No, I won't call him Ogre again; he isn't as good as an Ogre.

I--I don't know what to call him!"

"Calling him names won't bring back my trunk, Helen," sobbed Ruth.

"That's so. I--I'd make him pay for it! I'd make him get me dresses for those that were lost."

"Uncle is giving me a home; I suppose he will give me to wear all that he thinks I need. But I shall have to wear this dress to school, and it will soon not be fit to wear anywhere else."

"It's just too mean for anything, Ruth! I just wish--"

What Miss Cameron wished she did not proceed to explain. She stopped and bit her lip, looking at her friend all the time and nodding. Ruth was busily wiping her eyes and did not notice the very wise expression on Helen's face.

"Look out! here comes Tom," whispered Helen, suddenly, and Ruth made a last dab at her eyes and put away her handkerchief in a hurry.

"Say! ain't you ever going to get that thing done?" demanded Tom.

"Seems to me you haven't done anything at all since I was here last."

The girls became very busy then and worked swiftly until the pillow was completed. By that time it was late afternoon and they started homeward. Ruth separated from Helen and Tom at the main road and walked alone toward the Red Mill. She came to the bridge, which was at the corner of her uncle's farm, and climbed the stile, intending to follow the path up through the orchard to the rear of the house--the same path by which she and her friends had started on their little jaunt in the morning.

The brook which ran into the river, and bounded this lower end of Mr.

Potter's place, was screened by clumps of willows. Just beyond the first group of saplings Ruth heard a rough voice say:

"And I tell you to git out! Go on the other side of the crick, Jasper Parloe, if ye wanter fish. That ain't my land, but this is."

"Ain't ye mighty brash, Jabe?" demanded the snarling voice of Parloe, and Ruth knew the first speaker to be her uncle. "Who are yeou ter drive me away?"

"The last time ye was at the mill I lost something--I lost more than I kin afford to lose again," continued Uncle Jabez. "I don't say ye took it. They tell me the flood took it. But I'm going to know the right of it some time, and if you know more about it than you ought--"

"What air ye talkin' about, Jabe Potter?" shrilled Parloe. "I've lost money by you; ye ain't never paid me for the last month I worked for ye."

"Ye paid yerself--ye paid yerself," said Jabe, tartly. "And if ye stole once ye would again--"

"Now stop right there, Jabe Potter!" cried Parloe, and Ruth knew that he had stepped closer to Mr. Potter, and was speaking in a trembling rage. "Don't ye intermate an' insinerate; for if ye do, I kin fling out some insinerations likewise. Yeou jest open yer mouth about me stealin' an' I'll put a flea in old man Cameron's ear. Ha! Ye know what I mean. Better hev a care, Jabe Potter--better hev a care!"

There was silence. Her uncle made no reply, and Ruth, fearing she would be seen, and not wishing to be thought an eavesdropper (although the conversation had so surprised and terrified her that she had not thought what she did, before) the girl ran lightly up the hill, leaving the two old men to their wrangle. When Uncle Jabez came in to supper that evening his scowl was heavier than usual, if that were possible, and he did not speak to either Ruth or Aunt Alvirah all the evening.

CHAPTER XV

IN SCHOOL

Ruth thought it all over, and she came to this conclusion: Uncle Jabez had given his permission--albeit a grumpy one--and she would begin school on Monday. The black cloth dress that was so shabby and would look so odd and proverty-stricken among the frocks of the other girls (for she had watched them going to and from school, and already knew some of them to speak to) would have to be worn, if possible, through the term. Perhaps Uncle Jabez might notice how shabby she looked, finally, and give her something more appropriate to wear. Especially as it had been through him that her other frocks were lost.

But it was not an easy thing to face a whole schoolroom full of girls and boys--and most of them strangers to her--looking so "dowdyish."

Ruth's love of pretty things was born in her. She had always taken pride in her appearance, and she felt her shortcomings in this line quicker and more acutely than most girls of her age.

She faced the school on Monday morning and found it not so hard as she had supposed. Miss Cramp welcomed her kindly, and put her through quite a thorough examination to decide her grade. The Darrowtown schools had been so good that Ruth was able to take a high place in this one, and the teacher seated her among the most advanced of her pupils, although Ruth was younger than some of them.

The fact that Ruth was well grounded in the same studies that the scholars at this district school were engaged in, made a difficulty for her at the start. But she did not know it then. She only knew that Miss Cramp, seating her pupils according to their grade, sent her to an empty seat beside one of the largest girls--Julia Semple.

A good many of the girls stared at the new-comer with more than ordinary attention; but Julia immediately turned her back on her new seatmate. Ruth did not, however, give Julia much attention at the time. She was quite as bashful as most girls of her age; and, too, there were many things during that first session to hold her attention. But at recess she found that Julia walked away from her without a word and that most of the girls who seemed to be in her grade kept aloof, too. As a stranger in the school the girl from the Red Mill felt no little unhappiness at this evident slight; but she was too proud to show her disappointment. She made friends with the younger girls and was warmly welcomed in their games and pastimes.

"Julia's mad at you, you see," one of her new acquaintances confided to Ruth.

"Mad at me? What for?" asked the surprised new scholar.

"Why, that seat was Rosy Ball's. Rosy has gone away to see her sister married and she's coming back to-morrow. If you hadn't come in to take her place, Rosy would have been let sit beside Julia again, of course, although like enough she's fallen behind the cla.s.s. Miss Cramp is very strict."

"But I didn't know that. I couldn't help it," cried Ruth.

"Just the same, Julia says she doesn't like you and that you're a n.o.body--that Jabe Potter has taken you in out of charity. And Julia pretty nearly bosses everything and everybody around this school. Her father, Mr. Semple, you see, is chairman of the school board."

Her plain-spoken friend never realized how much she was hurting Ruth by telling her this. Ruth's pride kept her up, nor would she make further overtures toward friendship with her cla.s.smates. She determined, during those first few days at the district school, that she would do her very best to get ahead and to win the commendation of her teacher. There was a splendid high school at Cheslow, and she learned that Miss Cramp could graduate pupils from her school directly into the Cheslow High. It was possible, the teacher a.s.sured her, for Ruth to fit herself for such advancement between that time and the fall term.

It seemed as though Ruth could never make her crotchety old uncle love her. As time pa.s.sed, the loss of his cash-box seemed to prey upon the miller's mind more and more. He never spoke of it in the house again; it is doubtful if he spoke of it elsewhere. But the loss of the money increased (were that possible) his moroseness. He often spoke to neither the girl nor Aunt Alvirah from sunrise to sunset.

But although Uncle Jabez was so moody and so unkind to her, in the little old woman, whose back and whose bones gave her so much trouble, Ruth found a loving and thoughtful friend. Aunt Alvirah was as troubled at first about Ruth's lack of frocks as the girl was herself.

But before Ruth had been attending school a week, she suddenly became very light-hearted upon the question of dress.

"Now, don't you fret about it, deary," said Aunt Alviry, wagging her head knowingly. "Gals like you has jest got ter hev frocks, an' the good Lord knows it, jest the same as He knows when a sparrer falls.

There'll be a way pervided--there'll be a way pervided. Ef I can't make ye a purty dress, 'cause o' my back an' my bones, there's them that kin. We'll hev Miss 'Cretia Lock in by the day, and we'll make 'em."

"But, dear," said Ruth, wonderingly, "how will we get the goods--and the tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs--and pay Miss Lock for her work?"

"Don't you fret about that. Jest you wait and see," declared Aunt Alvirah, mysteriously.

Ruth knew very well that the old woman had not a penny of her own.

Uncle Jabez would never have given her a cent without knowing just what it was for, and haggling over the expenditure then, a good deal.

To his view, Aunt Alviry was an object of his charity, too, although for more than ten years the old woman had kept his house like wax and had saved him the wages of a housekeeper.

This very day, on coming home from school, Ruth had met Doctor Davison coming away from the Red Mill. She thought the red and white mare, that was so spirited and handsome, had been tied to the post in front of the kitchen door, and that the physician must have called upon Aunt Alvirah.

"So this is the young lady who wouldn't stop at my house but went to Sam Curtis' to stay all night," he said, holding in the mare and looking down at Ruth. "And you haven't been past the gate with the green eyes since?"

"No, sir," Ruth said, timidly. "I have never even been to town."