Ruth Hall. Fern Fanny
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when he used to think me perfect. I suppose I shall be laid on the shelf now. Well, what beauty he can find in that pale, golden hair, and those blue-gray eyes, I don’t know. I can’t say I fancy the family either. Proud as Lucifer, all of ’em. Nothing to be proud of, either. The father next to nothing when he began life. The son, a conceited jackanapes, who divides his time between writing rhymes and inventing new ties for his cravat. Well, well, we shall see; but I doubt if this bride is anything but a well-dressed doll. I’ve been peeping into her bureau drawers to-day. What is the use of all those ruffles on her under-clothes, I’d like to know? Who’s going to wash and iron them? Presents to her! Well, why don’t people make sensible presents,—a dozen of dish towels, some crash rollers, a ball of wick-yarn, or the like of that?”
“O-o-oh d-e-a-r! there’s the carriage! Now, for one month to come, to say the least, I shall be made perfectly sick with their billing and cooing. I shouldn’t be surprised if Harry didn’t speak to me oftener than once a day. Had he married a practical woman I wouldn’t have cared—somebody who looked as if God made her for something; but that little yellow-haired simpleton—umph!”
Poor Ruth, in happy ignorance of the state of her new mother-in-law’s feelings, moved about her apartments in a sort of blissful dream. How odd it seemed, this new freedom, this being one’s own mistress. How odd to see that shaving-brush and those razors lying on her toilet table! then that saucy looking smoking-cap, those slippers and that dressing-gown, those fancy neck-ties, too, and vests and coats, in unrebuked proximity to her muslins, laces, silks and de laines!
Ruth liked it.
CHAPTER IV.
“Good morning, Ruth; Mrs. Hall I suppose I should call you, only that I can’t get used to being shoved one side quite so suddenly,” said the old lady, with a faint attempt at a laugh.
“Oh, pray don’t say Mrs. Hall to me” said Ruth, handing her a chair; “call me any name that best pleases you; I shall be quite satisfied.”
“I suppose you feel quite lonesome when Harry is away, attending to business, and as if you hardly knew what to do with yourself; don’t you?”
“Oh, no,” said Ruth, with a glad smile, “not at all, I was just thinking whether I was not glad to have him gone a little while, so that I could sit down and think how much I love him.”
The old lady moved uneasily in her chair. “I suppose you understand all about housekeeping, Ruth?”
Ruth blushed. “No,” said she, “I have but just returned from boarding-school. I asked Harry to wait till I had learned house-keeping matters, but he was not willing.”
The old lady untied her cap-strings, and patted the floor restlessly with her foot.
“It is a great pity you were not brought up properly,” said she. “I learned all that a girl should learn, before I married. Harry has his fortune yet to make, you know. Young people, now-a-days, seem to think that money comes in showers, whenever it is wanted; that’s a mistake; a penny at a time—that’s the way we got ours; that’s the way Harry and you will have to get yours. Harry has been brought up sensibly. He has been taught economy; he is, like me, naturally of a very generous turn; he will occasionally offer you pin-money. In those cases, it will be best for you to pass it over to me to keep; of course you can always have it again, by telling me how you wish to spend it. I would advise you, too, to lay by all your handsome clothes. As to the silk stockings you were married in, of course you will never be so extravagant as to wear them again. I never had a pair of silk stockings in my life; they have a very silly, frivolous look. Do you know how to iron, Ruth?”
“Yes,” said Ruth; “I have sometimes clear-starched my own muslins and laces.”
“Glad to hear it; did you ever seat a pair of pantaloons?”
“No,” said Ruth, repressing a laugh, and yet half inclined to cry; “you forget that I am just home from boarding-school.”
“Can you make bread? When I say bread I mean bread—old fashioned, yeast riz bread; none of your sal-soda, salæratus, sal-volatile poisonous mixtures, that must be eaten as quick as baked, lest it should dry up; yeast bread—do you know how to make it?”
“No,” said Ruth, with a growing sense of her utter good-for-nothingness; “people in the city always buy baker’s bread; my father did.”
“Your father! land’s sake, child, you mustn’t quote your father now you’re married; you haven’t any father.”
I never had, thought Ruth.
“To be sure; what does the Bible say? ‘Forsaking father and mother, cleave to your wife,’ (or husband, which amounts to the same thing, I take it;) and speaking of that, I hope you won’t be always running home, or running anywhere in fact. Wives should be keepers at home. Ruth,” continued the old lady after a short pause, “do you know I should like your looks better, if you didn’t curl your hair?”
“I don’t curl it,” said Ruth, “it curls naturally.”
“That’s a pity,” said the old lady, “you should avoid everything that looks frivolous; you must try and pomatum it down. And Ruth, if you should feel the need of exercise, don’t gad in the streets. Remember there is nothing like a broom and a dust-pan to make the blood circulate.”
“You keep a rag bag, I suppose,” said the old lady; “many’s the glass dish I’ve peddled away my scissors-clippings for. ‘Waste not, want not.’ I’ve got that framed somewhere. I’ll hunt it up, and put it on your wall. It won’t do you any harm to read it now and then.”
“I hope,” continued the old lady, “that you don’t read novels and such trash. I have a very select little library, when you feel inclined to read, consisting of a treatise on ‘The Complaints of Women,’ an excellent sermon on Predestination, by our old minister, Dr. Diggs, and Seven Reasons why John Rogers, the martyr, must have had ten children instead of nine (as is generally supposed); any time that you stand in need of rational reading come to me;” and the old lady, smoothing a wrinkle in her black silk apron, took a dignified leave.
CHAPTER V.
Poor Ruth! her sky so soon overcast! As the door closed on the prim, retreating figure of her mother-in-law, she burst into tears. But she was too sensible a girl to weep long. She wiped her eyes, and began to consider what was to be done. It would never do to complain to Harry—dear Harry. He would have to take sides; oh no, that would never do; she could never complain to him of his own mother. But why did he bring them together? knowing, as he must have known, how little likely they were to assimilate. This thought she smothered quickly, but not before it had given birth to a sigh, close upon the heels of which love framed this apology: It was so long since Harry had lived under the same roof with his mother he had probably forgotten her eccentricities; and then she was so dotingly fond of him, that probably no points of collision ever came up between the two.
In the course of an hour, what with cold bathing and philosophy, Ruth’s eyes and equanimity were placed beyond the suspicion even of a newly-made husband, and when she held up her lips to him so temptingly, on his return, he little dreamed of the self-conquest she had so tearfully achieved for his sake.
CHAPTER VI.
Harry’s father began life on a farm in Vermont.