Ruth Hall. Fern Fanny
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where the pretty clematis threw the graceful arms of youth ’round the gnarled trunk of decay; where the bearded grain, swaying to and fro, tempted to its death the reaper; where the red and white clover dotted the meadow grass; or where, in the damp marsh, the whip-poor-will moaned, and the crimson lobelia nodded its regal crown; or where the valley smiled in its beauty ’neath the lofty hills, nestling ’mid its foliage the snow-white cottages; or where the cattle dozed under the broad, green branches, or bent to the glassy lake to drink; or where, on the breezy hill-tops, the voices of childhood came up, sweet and clear, as the far-off hymning of angels,—there, Ruth and her soul’s child loved to linger.
It was beautiful, yet fearful, to mark the kindling eye of the child; to see the delicate flush come and go on her marble cheek, and to feel the silent pressure of her little hand, when this alone could tell the rapture she had no words to express.
Ah, Ruth! gaze not so dotingly on those earnest eyes. Know’st thou not,
The rose that sweetest doth awake,
Will soonest go to rest?
CHAPTER XII.
“Well,” said the doctor, taking his spectacles from his nose, and folding them up carefully in their leathern case; “I hope you’ll be easy, Mis. Hall, now that we’ve toted out here, bag and baggage, to please you, when I supposed I was settled for the rest of my life.”
“Fathers can’t be expected to have as much natural affection, or to be as self-sacrificing as mothers,” said the old lady. “Of course, it was some trouble to move out here; but, for Harry’s sake, I was willing to do it. What does Ruth know about house-keeping, I’d like to know? A pretty muss she’ll make of it, if I’m not around to oversee things.”
“It strikes me,” retorted the doctor, “that you won’t get any thanks for it—from one side of the house, at least. Ruth never says anything when you vex her, but there’s a look in her eye which—well, Mis. Hall, it tells the whole story.”
“I’ve seen it,” said the old lady, while her very cap-strings fluttered with indignation, “and it has provoked me a thousand times more than if she had thrown a brick-bat at my head. That girl is no fool, doctor. She knows very well what she is about: but diamond cut diamond, I say. Doctor, doctor, there are the hens in the garden. I want that garden kept nice. I suppose Ruth thinks that nobody can have flowers but herself. Wait till my china-asters and sweet peas come up. I’m going over to-day to take a peep round her house; I wonder what it looks like? Stuck full of gimcracks, of all sorts, I’ll warrant. Well, I shan’t furnish my best parlor till I see what she has got. I’ve laid by a little money, and—”
“Better give it to the missionaries, Mis. Hall,” growled the doctor; “I tell you Ruth don’t care a pin what you have in your parlor.”
“Don’t you believe it,” said the old lady.
“Well, anyhow,” muttered the doctor, “you can’t get the upper hand of her in that line; i. e., if she has a mind that you shall not. Harry is doing a very good business; and you know very well, it is no use to try to blind your eyes to it, that if she wanted Queen Victoria’s sceptre, he’d manage to get it for her.”
“That’s more than I can say of you,” exclaimed the old lady, fanning herself violently; “for all that I used to mend your old saddle-bags, and once made, with my own hands, a pair of leather small-clothes to ride horseback in. Forty years, doctor, I’ve spent in your service. I don’t look much as I did when you married me. I was said then to have ‘woman’s seven beauties,’ including the ‘dimple in the chin,’ which I see still remains;” and the old lady pointed to a slight indentation in her wrinkled face. “I might have had him that was Squire Smith, or Pete Packer, or Jim Jessup. There wasn’t one of ’em who had not rather do the chores on our farm, than on any other in the village.”
“Pooh, pooh,” said the doctor, “don’t be an old fool; that was because your father kept good cider.”
Mrs. Hall’s cap-strings were seen flying the next minute through the sitting-room door; and the doctor was heard to mutter, as she banged the door behind her, “that tells the whole story!”
CHAPTER XIII.
“A summer house, hey!” said the old lady, as with stealthy, cat-like steps, she crossed a small piece of woods, between her house and Ruth’s; “a summer house! that’s the way the money goes, is it? What have we here? a book;” (picking up a volume which lay half hidden in the moss at her feet;) “poetry, I declare! the most frivolous of all reading; all pencil marked;—and here’s something in Ruth’s own hand-writing—that’s poetry, too: worse and worse.”
“Well, we’ll see how the kitchen of this poetess looks. I will go into the house the back way, and take them by surprise; that’s the way to find people out. None of your company faces for me.” And the old lady peered curiously through her spectacles, on either side, as she passed along towards the kitchen door, and exclaimed, as her eye fell on the shining row, “six milkpans!—wonder if they buy their milk, or keep a cow. If they buy it, it must cost them something; if they keep a cow, I’ve no question the milk is half wasted.”
The old lady passed her skinny forefinger across one of the pans, examining her finger very minutely after the operation; and then applied the tip of her nose to the interior of it. There was no fault to be found with that milkpan, if it was Ruth’s; so, scrutinizing two or three dish towels, which were hanging on a line to dry, she stepped cautiously up to the kitchen door. A tidy, respectable-looking black woman met her on the threshold; her woolly locks bound with a gay-striped bandanna, and her ebony face shining with irresistible good humor.
“Is Ruth in?” said the old lady.
“Who, Missis?” said Dinah.
“Ruth.”
“Missis Hall lives here,” answered Dinah, with a puzzled look.
“Exactly,” said the old lady; “she is my son’s wife.”
“Oh! I beg your pardon, Missis,” said Dinah, curtseying respectfully. “I never heard her name called Ruth afore: massa calls her ‘bird,’ and ‘sunbeam.’”
The old lady frowned.
“Is she at home?” she repeated, with stately dignity.
“No,” said Dinah, “Missis is gone rambling off in the woods with little Daisy. She’s powerful fond of flowers, and things. She climbs fences like a squir’l! it makes this chil’ laf’ to see the ol’ farmers stare at her.”
“You must have a great deal to do, here;” said the old lady, frowning; “Ruth isn’t much of a hand at house-work.”
“Plenty to do, Missis, and willin’ hands to do it. Dinah don’t care how hard she works, if she don’t work to the tune of a lash; and Missis Hall goes singing about the house so that it makes time fly.”
“She don’t ever help you any, does she?” said the persevering old lady.
“Lor’ bless you! yes, Missis. She comes right in and makes a pie for Massa Harry, or cooks a steak jess’ as easy as she pulls off a flower; and when Dinah’s cooking anything new, she asks more questions how it’s done than this chil’ kin answer.”
“You have a great deal of company, I suppose; that must make you extra trouble, I should think; people riding out from the city to supper, when you are all through and cleared away: don’t it tire you?”