"Oh," begged Ruth, her blue eyes full of trouble. "Please, please, don't quarrel about me."

"I beg your pardon," apologized Larry. "See here, would you be willing to try it, just as an experiment? Would you go down there for a little while tonight with us?"

The blue eyes met the gray ones.

"If you--wanted me to," faltered the blue-eyes.

"Would you mind it very much?" Larry leaned forward. His voice was low, solicitous. Tony, listening, resented it a little. She didn't see why Larry had to keep his good manners for somebody outside the family. He might have spoken a little more politely to herself, she thought. She had only been trying to be nice to Ruth.

"Not--if you would take care of me and not let people talk to me too much," Ruth answered the solicitous tone.

"I will," promised Larry. "You needn't talk to a soul if you don't want to. I'll ward 'em off. And you can dance if you want to--one dance anyway."

"With me," announced Ted complacently from the gra.s.s. "My bid was in first. Don't you forget, Miss Peaseblossom." Ted had a mult.i.tude of pet names for Ruth. They slipped off his tongue easily, as water falling over a cliff.

"No, with me," said his brother shortly.

"Gee, I wish I were a doctor! It gives you a hideous advantage."

"But I haven't anything to wear," exclaimed Ruth, coming next to the really sole and only supreme woman question.

"We'll fix that easy as easy," said Tony, amicable again now. "I've a darling blue organdy that will look sweet on you--just the color of your eyes. Don't you worry a minute, honey. Your fairy G.o.dmother will see to all that. All I ask is that you won't let that old ogre of an M.D. change his mind and say you can't go. It isn't good for Larry to obey him so meekly. He is getting to be a regular tyrant."

A moment later Doctor Holiday joined the group, dropped on the bench beside Larry and was informed by Tony that Ruth was to go on an adventure down the Hill; to Sue Emerson's dance in fact.

"Isn't that great?" she demanded.

"Superb," he teased. Then he smiled approval at Ruth. "Good idea, Larry,"

he added to his nephew. "Glad you thought of it."

"I didn't think of it. Tony did. You really approve?" The gray eyes were a little anxious. Larry was by no means a know-it-all doctor, as his sister accused him. He had too little rather than too much confidence in his own judgment in fact.

"I certainly do. Go to it, little lady. May be the best medicine in the world for you."

"Now you are talking," exulted Ted. "That's what Tony and I said and Larry wanted to execute us on the spot for daring to have an opinion at all."

"Scare you much to think of it?" Doctor Holiday asked Ruth, prudently ignoring this last sally.

"A good deal," sighed Ruth. "But I'll try not to be too much scared if Larry will go too and not let people ask questions."

The young doctor had long since become Larry to Ruth. It was too confusing talking about two Doctor Holidays. Everybody in Dunbury said Larry or Doctor Larry or at most, respectfully, Doctor Laurence.

"I'll let n.o.body talk to you but myself," said Larry.

"There you are!" flashed Tony. "You might just as well keep her penned up here in the yard. You want to keep her all to yourself."

She didn't mean anything in particular, only to be a little disagreeable, to pay Larry back for being so snappy. But to her amazement Ruth was suddenly blushing a lovely but startling blush and Larry was bending over to examine the hammock-hook in obvious confusion.

"Good gracious!" she thought in consternation. "Is that what's up? It can't be. I'm just imagining it. Larry wouldn't fall in love with any one who wore a wedding ring. He mustn't."

But she knew in her heart that whether Larry must or must not he had. A thousand signs betrayed the truth now that her eyes were open. Poor Larry! No wonder he was cross and unlike himself. And Ruth was so sweet--just the girl for him. And poor Uncle Phil! She herself was hurting him dreadfully keeping her secret about Alan and n.o.body knew what Ted had up his sleeve under his cloak of incredible virtue. And now here was Larry with a worse complication still. Oh dear! Would the three of them ever stop getting into sc.r.a.pes as long as they lived? It was bad enough when they were children. It was infinitely worse now they were grown up and the sc.r.a.pes were so horribly serious.

"I suppose you can't tear yourself away from your studies to attend a mere dance?" Doctor Holiday was asking of his younger nephew with a twinkle in his eyes when Tony recovered enough to listen again.

Ted sent his cigarette stub careening off into the shrubbery and grinned back at his uncle, a grin half merry, half defiant.

"Like fun, I can't!" he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. "I'm a union man, I am. I've done my stunt for the day. If anybody thinks I'm going to stick my nose in between the covers of a book before nine A.M. tomorrow he has a whole orchard of brand new little thinks growing up to stub his toes on, that's all."

"So the student life doesn't improve with intimate acquaintance?" The doctor's voice was still teasing, but there was more than teasing behind his questions. He was really interested in his nephew's psychology.

"Not a da--ahem--darling bit. If I had my way every book in existence would be placed on a huge funeral pyre and conflagrated instantly.

Moreover, it would be a criminal offence punishable by the death sentence for any person to bring another of the infernal nuisances into the world.

That is my private opinion publicly expressed." So saying Ted picked himself up from the gra.s.s and sauntered off toward the house.

His uncle chuckled. He was sorry the boy did not take more cordially to books, since it looked as if there were a good two years of them ahead at the least. But he liked the honesty that would not pretend to anything it did not feel, and he liked even better the spirit that had kept the lad true to his pledge of honest work without a squirm or grumble through all these weeks of grilling summer weather when sustained effort of any sort, particularly mental effort, was undoubtedly a weariness and abomination to flesh and soul, to his restless, volatile, ease-addicted, liberty loving young ward. The boy had certainly shown more grit and grace than he had credited him with possessing.

The village clock struck six. Tony sprang up from her blanket and began to gather up her possessions.

"I never get over a scared, going-to-be-scolded feeling running down my spine when the clock strikes and I'm not ready for supper," she said.

"Poor dear Granny! She certainly worked hard trying to make truly proper persons out of us wild Arabs. It isn't her fault if she didn't succeed, is it Larry?" She smiled at her brother--a smile that meant in Tony language "I am sorry I was cross. Let's make up."

He smiled back in the same spirit. He rose taking the rug and magazines from his sister's hand and walked with her toward the house.

Ruth sat up in her hammock and smoothed her disarrayed blonde hair.

"I am glad you are going down the Hill," said the doctor to her. "It is a fine idea, little lady. Do you lots of good."

"Doctor Holiday, I think I ought to go away," announced Ruth suddenly. "I am perfectly well now, and there is no reason why I should stay."

"Tired of us?"

"Oh no! I could never be that. I love it here and love all of you. But after all I am only a stranger."

"Not to us, Ruthie. Listen. I would like to explain how I feel about this, not from your point of view but from ours."

Tony would be going away soon. They needed a home daughter very much, needed Ruth particularly as she had such a wonderful way with the children, who adored her, and because Granny loved her so well, though she did not love many people who were not Holidays. And he and Larry needed her good fairy ministrations. They had not been unmindful, though perhaps manlike they had not expressed their appreciation of the way fresh flowers found their way to the offices daily, and they were kept from being snowed under by the newspapers of yester week. In short Doctor Holiday made it very clear that, if Ruth cared to stay she was wanted and needed very much in the House on the Hill. And Ruth touched and grateful and happy promised to remain.

"If you think it is all right--" she added with rather sudden blush, "for me to stay when I am married or not married and don't know which."

Whereupon Doctor Holiday, who happened not to observe the blush, remarked that he couldn't see what that had to do with it. Anyway she seemed like such a child to them that they hardly remembered the wedding ring at all.

Ruth blushed again at that and wished she dared confess that she was afraid the wedding ring had a good deal to do with the situation in the eyes of one Holiday at least. But she could not bring herself to speak the fatal word which might banish her from the dear Hill and from Larry, who had come to be even dearer.

A dozen times, while she was dressing for the dance later, Ruth felt like crying out to Tony in the next room that she could not go, that she dared not face strangers, that it was too hard. But she set her lips firmly and did nothing of the sort. Larry wanted her to do it. She wouldn't disappoint him if it killed her.

Oh dear! Why did she always have to do everything as a case, never just as a girl. She couldn't even be natural as a girl. She had to be maybe married. She hated the ring which seemed to her a symbol of bondage to a past that was dead and yet still clutched her with cold hands. She had a childish impulse to fling the ring out of the window where she could never--never see it again. If it wasn't for the ring--

She interrupted her own thoughts, blushing hotly again. She knew she had meant to go on, "If it were not for the ring she could marry Larry Holiday." She mustn't think about that. She must not forget the ring, nor let Larry forget it. She must not let him love her. It was a terrible thing she was doing. He was unhappy--dreadfully unhappy and it was all her fault. And by and by they would all see it. Tony had seen it today, she was almost sure. And Doctor Holiday would see it. He saw so much it was a wonder he had not seen it long before this. They would hate her for hurting Larry and spoiling his life. She could not bear to have them hate her when she loved them so and they had been so kind and good to her. She must go away. She must. Maybe Larry would forget her if she wasn't always there right under his eyes.