Chapter XXXIII: In the Shaded Room

THE next day was spent in "looking round," as Mr. Brown called it.

He was exceedingly pleased that Dr. Brown thought of settling down near him, and that Vincent Linthorpe, of whom he spoke most highly, should have formed such a happy connection with his cousin's family.

There were endless jokes as to the new relationships, but everybody seemed pleased, and the topic of the existing houses, or the building of another, occupied all their thoughts.

Dr. Brown's two wishes were that the house should be on high ground and have an established garden; and these things circumscribed the number of available spots.

"We shall have to look out for anything that falls vacant," said Cousin Will, at the end of their first day's search.

"I think myself," said Dr. Brown, "that I shall have to buy a cottage perhaps, and build on to it. I shall get you to keep your eyes open for me."

"We will most gladly," said Alice; "and Vincent goes about so much, he may hear of something."

Ruth had now become quite at home with the Linthorpes, and had spent many happy half-hours with Vincent's mother and his invalid father.

On the morning of the day on which she was going home, she was sitting with them with her needlework in her hand, but she did not get on very fast. She was listening to such talks as she had never heard before, and she was wondering at the grace which sustained the patient invalid for all those long years.

"You bring me near to my Molly," he was saying. "Sometimes I think I catch a tone of her voice in yours!"

"Do you? You see we have been so much together! I cannot tell you what I owe to Mary, Mr. Linthorpe; and she says she owes it to you and her mother!"

"Oh! my dear, and we all owe it to God. It is His love and His patience and His strength that help us to go on at all! But Mary is a great treasure! Truly her prayer has been answered, 'Bless me, and make me a blessing.' Has it not?"

"It has to me—" said Ruth. "I was so hard and so self-willed before I knew Mary."

"Were you, my dear?"

"Dreadful!" said Ruth, shaking her head.

"Ah, well, my dear," said Mr. Linthorpe affectionately. "When we put ourselves into God's hands to do the best for us, and to mould us to His will, there is every prospect of a happy issue. He will not disappoint us of our hope."

"That is what my old Morris used to tell me," said Ruth, with glistening eyes. "But, Mr. Linthorpe, I feel so untried. I often wonder how people 'bear' things! I feel as if I 'could' not! And yet that does not seem right, I know."

"I understand," he answered tenderly, "but, my dear, God does not ask us to bear everything that everybody has! He has promised grace for that which He calls 'us' to pass through! That thought has been a great comfort to me. I was thinking about it only the other week. Satan said to me, 'You have had a great many years of weakness, and you have been very patient' (yes, my dear, he twitted me with that!), 'but now there are other things you may have to bear, how will you do then?'

"For a moment I was staggered, but then came another thought, straight from my Lord and Saviour, 'But "He" said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.'"

Ruth's eyes filled. She knew from Mary what all the years had been, and she bent and kissed the suffering, peaceful face almost reverently.

He looked up and gave a beaming smile.

"Do you know the end of that quotation?" he asked tenderly.

"No—"

"'"Most gladly," therefore, will I glory in my infirmities that the power of Christ may rest upon me!'"

So after a very happy four days, Ruth and Dr. Brown went home, and Vincent was left behind to apply himself to his work and to look forward to the next meeting.

"Well, Cousin Ruth," said Heston, when they got home, "I would not have believed that the house would be so empty without you!"

"I expect it was," said Ruth.

"Did you wish you were back here?" asked Judith.

"Sometimes. I caught myself feeling home-sick two or three times in spite of being so happy."

"That's right," said Heston; "I didn't want you to be asked there for ever!"

"'For ever?'" she questioned smilingly.

"Well, you know what I mean! Endlessly paying visits away from us, you know."

"Oh, well, we shall see. I do not intend to leave my father, anyway—so you need not be afraid."

When she went up to wish Norman good-night, he looked wistfully in her face after her kiss. "Well, dear?" she asked.

"Must you go down directly?"

"Oh, no; I will sit by you. Did you want me to talk to you?"

"A little while. It is so nice to have you back. No one is just like you, you know."

She stroked his head.

"Everybody has been so kind," pursued Norman, "especially Heston. Don't you think Heston is awfully kind—for a boy?"

Ruth laughed softly.

"He is—for a boy. He is every way, I think, one of the kindest boys I ever met."

"He used to read to me every night, just like you do, and then when he had done reading the first evening, he said, 'Doesn't Cousin Ruth say a prayer with you?'"

"I said, 'Yes.'

"And so he knelt down and repeated 'Our Father.' Was it not kind?"

"'Very' kind."

"And then, Cousin Ruth, he sat down by me, and told me about one night on board the steamer when we were coming home from India.

"He was standing on deck watching the stars, leaning on the railings, when an old sailor came up to him, and asked him if he might say a word to the young gentleman, because he was a bit like his son who was far away? So Heston said he might certainly if he liked.

"And then the old sailor said he made bold to speak because he knew what it was to have our Saviour as his own, and he wanted the young gentleman to have Him too."

"What a dear old man," said Ruth.

"Yes; and Heston said that after that, he could not forget his words, and how the old sailor had said,—

"'Him that cometh unto Me I will in no wise cast out.'

"And those words rang in his ears all the rest of the voyage. And then, Cousin Ruth, on the second morning that uncle had prayers with us, the words he read were those very ones!—

"'Him that cometh unto Me I will in no wise cast out.'

"And Heston was so struck with them that he thought the best thing was to 'Come,' as the words said, and he has felt happier ever since!"

"How glad I am," said Ruth joyfully.

"I knew you would be," said Norman, throwing his arms round her neck.

So once more Ruth "settled in" as she called it.

Norman was now considered well enough to do a few hours' schooling every day, and he was able to walk down to the town daily and ride up with his uncle at four o'clock.

So Ruth found herself much more at liberty in the middle of each day.

When the Term began, Heston went to school at Worcester and returned for the week-ends, and they all missed him very much.

But Ruth had plenty to do. She diligently set herself to learn all the housewifely arts that came in her way. And cook, who was her devoted instructress, delighted in the success which attended their efforts.

In the evenings, when Judith's lessons were prepared, the two "sisters" as Judith insisted on naming them, sat at their needlework.

"I only wish Missie Morris could see," Mala sometimes remarked.

And Judith would say saucily as she called a blush in Ruth's face, "The fact is Cousin Ruth, you want to be a perfect wife."

"That I never shall be!" said Ruth shaking her head. "For Mary's father told me that human nature is chiefly remarkable for its failure!"

Judith paused with the scissors in her hand and looked at her dubiously. "Then shall you not be a perfect wife after all your efforts?"

"I'll be as perfect as I can," said Ruth smiling; "but seriously, Judith, do you not find in your heart, that when you would do good, evil is present with you?"

"I thought that was because I was so far worse than other people!" said Judith.

"No, I do not think that is it. I think it is that we are faulty, and full of evil, and we want to be freshly forgiven, and freshly enabled every day and every hour."

Judith was silent; she went on with her work as if absorbed in it, but really, she was thinking of what they had been talking about.

"I should like to be good and please Jesus," she said at length, "but I do fail so often! I get cross if I am called off my lessons to do things. And then if we are working, and Mala comes in and wants me to find the key of my drawers, I feel so annoyed with her! I am afraid, Ruth, that I have not a very good temper—"

Ruth was leaning over for the scissors, and she took the opportunity to kiss Judith's soft little cheek.

"I am sure all these things that we are conscious of as failures will improve if we are watchful," she said, affectionately, "and if our chief aim is really to please God in our everyday life."

"Do you really think so? That is very comforting," the girl responded, and then took up her work again and went on with it with fresh zest.

Thus the winter advanced, but nothing was heard of any house being to let which would suit Dr. Brown's ideas.

"I shall have to build, after all, I fear," he said one evening, "but I shall wait till March before deciding."

Vincent came for week-ends as often as he could, and Mr. Brown, with his usual thoughtfulness, made things as easy for him as he could. Mary often laughed, and quoted to Arthur that "it was an ill wind that blew nobody any good," for she had quite a treat of her twin now.

Ruth, as usual, spent many of her spare hours with her friend.

The baby would lie and kick and crow on the pillow on the floor, while Mary made endless garments for him, and Ruth plied her needle over her own preparations.

One day, after two or three days' absence, Ruth entered Mary's dining-room with an unusually eager look on her face.

"Have you come back?" asked Mary, looking up.

"Yes—this morning; just now. I felt I must come in to tell you. We have bought the house!"

"Oh, have you?"

"Yes; you knew that my father and I went the day before yesterday? It was all in such a hurry that I could not come in to tell you. Norman promised he would."

"And so he did, dear. Do tell me all about it."

"The man who had the house to sell would not wait. I cannot explain why, but something about foreclosing a mortgage."

"Yes, I know—"

"So we had to settle it soon, and father was afraid of losing it. Mary, it is lovely! It is on the highest ground anywhere round, and has nice views over the fields, and such a sweet garden."

"And how about the house? Is that suitable for what Dr. Brown wants?"

"Yes; it can be altered capitally. It is little more than two cottages, and father proposes to build on the ends of them a sort of wing to each. Oh, such dear old-fashioned staircases, and such low, sloping ceilings! I never saw anything so pretty!

"Father says he shall open a doorway between the two little halls, so that we may be able to visit each other without going out of doors."

"That will be very nice," said Mary heartily.

"Vincent likes it," said Ruth; "he is not afraid that we shall see too much of them. He says he has always been used to a large family, and he thinks it is the very happiest thing that could be.

"Oh, Mary! If you could have been there, and have seen us dancing about for joy at such a lovely home as it will be!"

"Will they spoil the garden very much with their building operations?"

"Father thinks not. Of course the two grass-plots will suffer, but he says there is more than a year, and that is easily replaced. No, it is the trees, and the currants and gooseberries, the syringas and the laurels, that charm him, to say nothing of the old-fashioned flower-beds full of all kinds of perennials which are already beginning to peep out."

Mary's sympathy was very great. She dearly loved "planning" houses, and told Ruth she must bring the plans for her to see, as no one would enjoy them more!

"We have had no time to talk of them," said Ruth; "but do you know, Mary, I consider father is growing quite young again with the interest of all this. He never gives those heavy sighs now!"

"His heart is at rest, dear, for one thing: what a difference that makes."

"I sometimes look back, and am amazed," said Ruth softly, "at all the changes that have come in the last year or two. How sad we were, and how dear old Morris was the only one in our house who cared about the best things. And now—"

"It is very wonderful," said Mary.

"Oh, it is! I trace a great deal of it to dear old Morris's prayers, Mary! And then, next, to 'you.' You have been made a blessing to me, indeed!"

"A most unworthy one, then," said Mary.

Just at that moment Arthur came in, having met Dr. Brown in the town, and having heard the news of the house from him.

"So you are the happy possessor of ten acres, Ruth, and a couple of pretty cottages into the bargain!" he said, in a congratulatory tone.

"Yes, my father has bought it."

"Bought it for you, he told me. It is to be made out in your name!"

Ruth turned crimson with surprise. "I did not know," she exclaimed; "he did not tell me that."

"He made no secret of it to me," smiled Arthur. "He said 'it was a love-token for the Doctor's Daughter,' if you know who that is!"

THE END.