"Oh, father'll console himself very well with prayers; and anyway he'll thank G.o.d for sending me to perdition, because if G.o.d does it, it must be all right."

"Don't, Tom! You know how he suffers at the way you go on. It must be terrible to have an only son, and to see him flinging his life away."

"It isn't my fault that I'm his son, is it?" he demanded. "I've been dragged into this infernal life without being asked whether I wanted to come or not; and now I'm here, I can't have what I want, and I'm promised eternal d.a.m.nation hereafter. Well, then, I'll show G.o.d or the Devil, or whoever bosses things, that I can't be bullied into a molly-coddle!"

The sound of wheels interrupted us, and we instinctively began to walk onward in the most commonplace fashion. A farmer's wagon came along, and by the time it had pa.s.sed we had come to the head of the Rim Road, in full sight of the houses. Tom waited until I turned to the right, toward home, and then he said,--

"I'm going the other way. It's no use, Ruth, to talk to me; but I'm obliged to you for caring."

I cannot see that I did any good, and very likely I have simply made him more on his guard to avoid giving me a chance; but then, even if I had all the chance in the world, what could I say to him? And yet, Tom is so n.o.ble a fellow underneath it all. He is honest and kind, and strong in his way; only between his father's meekness and his mother's sharpness--for she is sharp--he has somehow come to grief. They have tried to make him religious so that he would be good; and he is of the sort that must be good or he will not be religious. He cannot be pressed into a mould of orthodoxy, and so in the end--But it cannot be the end.

Tom must somehow come out of it.

January 13. When George came in to-night I was struck at once with the look of pleasant excitement in his face.

"What pleases you?" I asked him.

"Pleases me?" he echoed, evidently surprised. "Isn't it a pleasure to see you?"

"But that's not the whole of it," I said. "You've something pleasant to tell me. Oh, I can read you like a book, my dear; so it is quite idle trying to keep a secret from me."

He seemed confused, and I was puzzled to know what was the matter.

"You are too wise entirely," was his reply. "I really hadn't anything to tell."

"Then something good has happened," I persisted; "or you have heard good news."

"What a fanciful girl you are, Ruth," George returned. "Nothing has happened."

He walked away from me, and went to the fire. He was strangely embarra.s.sed, and I could only wonder what I had said to confuse him. I reflected that perhaps he was planning some sort of a surprise, and felt I ought not to pry into his thoughts in this fashion whatever the matter was that interested him. I sat down on the other side of the hearth, and took up some sewing.

"George," I asked, entirely at random, "didn't you say that the Miss West you met at Franklin is a cousin of the Watsons?"

I flushed as soon as I had spoken, for I thought how it betrayed me that in my desire to hit on a new subject I had found the thought of her so near the surface of my mind. I had not consciously been thinking of her at all, and certainly I did not connect her with George's strangeness of manner. There was something almost weird, it seems to me now, in my putting such a question just then. Perhaps it was telepathy, for she must have been vividly in his thoughts at that moment. He started, flushed as I have never seen him, and turned quickly toward me.

"What makes you think that it was Miss West?"

"Think what was Miss West?" I cried.

I was completely astonished; then I saw how it was.

"Never mind, George," I went on, laughing and putting out my hand to him. "I didn't mean to read your thoughts, and I didn't realize that I was doing it."

"But what made you"--

"I'm sure I don't know," I broke in; and I managed to laugh again. "Only I see now that you know something pleasant about Miss West, and you may as well tell it."

He looked doubtful a minute, studying my face. The hesitation he had in speaking hurt me.

"It's only that she's coming to visit the Watsons," he said, rather unwillingly. "Olivia Watson told me just now."

"Why, that will be pleasant," I answered, as brightly as if I were really delighted. "Now I shall see if she is really as pretty as you say."

I felt so humiliated to be playing a part,--so insincere. Somebody has said the real test of love is to be unwilling to deceive the loved one, even in the smallest thing. That may be the test of a man's love, but a woman will bear the pain of that very deception to save the man she cares for from disquiet. I am sure it has hurt me as much not to be entirely frank with George as it could have hurt a man; but I could not make him uncomfortable by letting him see that I was disturbed. Yet that he should have been afraid or unwilling to tell me did trouble me. He knows that I am not jealous or apt to take offense. He is always saying that I am too cold to be really in love. It made me feel that the coming of this girl must mean much to him when he feared to speak of it. If he had not thought it a matter of consequence, he would have realized that I should take it lightly.

I am not taking it lightly; but what troubles me is not that she is coming, but that he hesitated to tell me. Something is wrong when George fears to trust me.

January 17. I have seen her. I went to church this morning for that especial reason. Mother was a little astonished at me when I said that I was going.

"Well, Ruth," she said, "you don't have much dissipation, but I didn't suppose that you were so dull you would take to church-going."

"You can never tell," I answered, making a jest of a thing which to me was far from funny. "Mr. Saychase will be sure to conclude I'm under conviction of sin, and come in to finish the conversion."

She looked at me keenly.

"What is the matter, Ruth?" she asked in that soft voice of hers which goes straight to my heart.

"It isn't anything very serious, Mother," I said. "Since you will have the truth, I am going to church to see that Miss West who's visiting the Watsons. George thinks her so pretty that my curiosity is roused to a perfect bonfire."

She did not say more, but I saw the sudden light in her eye. Mother has never felt about George as I have wished. She has never done him justice, and she thinks I idealize him. That is her favorite way of putting it; but this is because she is my mother, and doesn't see how much idealizing there must have been on his side before he could fall in love with me.

Miss West is very pretty. All the time I watched in church I tried to persuade myself that she was not. I meanly and contemptibly sat there finding fault with her face, saying to myself that her nose was too long, her eyes too small, her mouth too big; inventing flaws as if my invention would change the fact. It was humiliating business; and utterly and odiously idiotic. Miss West is pretty; she is more than this, she is wonderfully pretty. There is an appealing, baby look about her big blue eyes which goes straight to one's heart. She looks like a darling child one would want to kiss and shelter from all the hard things of life. I own it all; I realize all that it means; and if in my inmost soul I am afraid, I will not deny what is a fact or try to shut my eyes to the littleness of my feeling about her. Of course George found her adorable. She is. The young men in the congregation all watched her, and even grim Deacon Richards could not keep his eyes off of her.

She does not have the look of a girl of any especial mind. Her prettiness is after all that of a doll. Her large eyes are of the sort to please a man because of their appealing helplessness; not because they inspire him with new meanings. Her little rosebud lips will never speak wisdom, I am afraid; but in my jealousy I wonder whether most men do not care more for lips which invite kisses than for lips which speak wisdom. I am frankly and weakly miserable. George walked home with me, but he had not two words to say.

I must try to meet this. If George should come to care for her more than for me! If he should,--if by a pretty face he forgets all the years that we have belonged to each other, what is there to do? I cannot yet believe that it is best for him; but if it will make him happy, even if he thinks that it will, what is there for me but to make it as easy for him as I may? He certainly would not be happy to marry me and love somebody else. He cannot leave me without pain; that I am sure. I shall show my love for him more truly if I spare him the knowledge of what it must cost me.

But what mawkish nonsense all this is! A man may admire a pretty face, and yet not be ready for it to leave behind all that has been dear to him. Oh, if he had not asked me that question when he came back from Franklin! I cannot get it out of my mind that even if he was not conscious of it, it meant he still was secretly tired of his long engagement; that he was at least dreaming of what he would do if he were free. He shall not be bound by any will of mine; and if his heart has gone out to this beautiful creature, I must bear it as n.o.bly as I can.

Father used to say,--and every day I go back more and more to what he said to me,--"What you cannot at need sacrifice n.o.bly you are not worthy to possess."

January 18. I have had a note which puzzles me completely. Tom Webbe writes to say that he is going away; that I am to forgive him for the shame of having known him, and that his address is inclosed in a sealed envelope. I am not to open it unless there is real need. Why should he give his address to me?

January 19. The disconcerting way Aunt Naomi has of coming in without knocking, stealing in on feet made noiseless by rubbers, brought her into the sitting-room last night while I was mooning in the twilight, and meditating on nothing in particular. I knew her slow fashion of opening the door, "like a burglar at a cupboard," as Hannah says,--so that I was able to compose my face into an appropriate smile of welcome before she was fairly in.

"Sitting here alone?" was her greeting.

"Mother is asleep," I answered, "and I was waiting for her to wake."

Aunt Naomi seated herself in the stiffest chair in the room, and began to swing her foot as usual.

"Deacon Daniel's at it again," she observed dispa.s.sionately.

I smiled a little. It always amuses me that the troubles of the church should be so often brought to me who am an outsider. Aunt Naomi arrives about once a month on the average, with complaints about something. They are seldom of any especial weight, but it seems to relieve her to tell her grievances.

"Which Deacon Daniel?" I asked, to tease her a little.