Part 17 (1/2)

She saw, too, that Tom pulled something from his pocket hastily and thrust it into Parloe's hand. The old man chuckled slily, said something else to the boy, and then turned away and climbed into his wagon again. He drove away as Ruth ran down the path to the waiting auto.

”Hullo, Tom!” she cried. ”I told you I wouldn't keep you waiting long.”

”How-do, Ruth,” he returned; but it must be confessed that he was not as bright and smiling as usual, and he looked away from Ruth and after Parloe the next moment.

As the girl reached the machine Uncle Jabez came to the mill door again. He observed Ruth about to get in and he came down the steps and strode toward the Cameron automobile. Jasper Parloe had clucked to his old nag and was now rattling away from the place.

”Where are you going, Ruth?” the miller demanded, sternly eyeing Tom Cameron, and without returning the lad's polite greeting.

”She is going up to our house to lunch with my sister, Mr. Potter,”

Tom hastened to say before Ruth could reply.

”She will do nothing of the kind,” said Uncle Jabez, shortly. ”Ruth, go back to the house and help your Aunt Alvirah. You are going about too much and leaving your aunt to do everything.”

This was not so, and Ruth knew very well that her uncle knew it was not so. She flushed and hesitated, and he said:

”Do you hear me? I expect to be obeyed if you remain here at the Red Mill. Just because I lay few commands upon you, is no reason why you should consider it the part of wisdom to be disobedient when I do give an order.”

”Oh, Uncle! do let me go,” begged Ruth, fairly crying. ”Helen has been so kind to me--and Aunt Alvirah did not suppose you would object.

They come here--”

”But I do not propose that they shall come here any more,” declared Uncle Jabez, in the same stern tone. ”You can drive on, young man. The less I see of any of you Camerons the better I shall like it.”

”But, Mr. Potter--” began Tom.

The old man raised his hand and stopped him.

”I won't hear any talk about it. I know just how much these Camerons have done for you,” he said to Ruth. ”They've done enough--altogether too much. We will stop this intimacy right here and now. At least, you will not go to their house, Ruth. Do as I tell you--go in to your Aunt Alviry.”

Then, as the weeping girl turned away, she heard him say, even more harshly than he had spoken to her: ”I don't want anything to do with people who are hand and glove with that Jasper Parloe. He's a thief-- a bigger thief, perhaps, than people generally know. At least, he's cost me enough. Now, you drive on and don't let me see you or your sister about here again.”

He turned on his heel and went back to the mill without giving Tom time to say a word. The boy, angry enough, it was evident from his expression of countenance, hesitated several minutes after the miller was gone. Once he arose, as though he would get out of the car and follow Jabez into the mill. But finally he started the engine, turned the car, and drove slowly away.

This was a dreadful day indeed for the girl of the Red Mill. Never in her life had she been so hurt--never had she felt herself so ill-used since coming to this place to live. Uncle Jabez had never been really kind to her; but aside from the matter of the loss of her trunk he had never before been actually cruel.

He could have selected no way that would have hurt her more keenly. To refuse to let her go to see the girl she loved--her only close friend and playmate! And to refuse to allow Helen and Tom to come here to see her! This intimacy was all (and Ruth admitted it now, in a torrent of tears, as she lay upon her little bed) that made life at the Red Mill endurable. Had she not met Helen and found her such a dear girl and so kind a companion, Ruth told herself now that she never could have borne the dull existence of this house.

She heard Aunt Alvirah's halting step upon the stair and before the old woman reached the top of the flight, Ruth plainly heard her moaning to herself: ”Oh, my back! and oh, my bones!” Thus groaning and halting, Aunt Alvirah came to Ruth's door and pushed it open.

”Oh, deary, deary, me!” she whispered, limping into the room.

”Don't-ee cry no more, poor lamb. Old Aunt Alviry knows jest how it hurts--she wishes she could bear it for ye! Now, now, my pretty creetur--don't-ee take on so. Things will turn out all right yet.

Don't lose hope.”

She had reached the bed ere this and had gathered the sobbing girl into her arms. She sat upon the side of the bed and rocked Ruth to and fro, with her arms about her. She did not say much more, but her unspoken sympathy was wonderfully comforting.

Aunt Alvirah did not criticise Uncle Jabez's course. She never did.

But she gave Ruth in her sorrow all the sympathy of which her great nature was capable. She seemed to understand just how the girl felt, without a spoken word on her part. She did not seek to explain the miller's reason for acting as he did. Perhaps she had less idea than had Ruth why Jabez Potter should have taken such a violent dislike to the Camerons.

For Ruth half believed that she held the key to that mystery. When she came to think it over afterward she put what she had heard between the two old men--Jabez and Parloe--down at the brook, with what had occurred at the mill just before Tom Cameron had come in sight; and putting these two incidents together and remembering that Jasper Parloe had overheard Tom in his delirium accuse the miller of being the cause of his injury, Ruth was pretty sure that in that combination of circ.u.mstances was the true explanation of Uncle Jabez's cruel decision.