Part 3 (2/2)

When Ruth began to do over the interior of the old house, however, Uncle Jabez protested. The house and mill had been built a hundred and fifty years before--if not longer ago. It was sacrilege to touch a crooked rafter or a hammered nail of the entire structure.

But Ruth insisted that she be allowed to make her own rooms under the roof more comfortable and modern. Ruth had seen old New England farmhouses rebuilt in the most attractive way one could imagine without disturbing their ancient exterior appearance. She gathered ideas from books and magazines, and then went about replanning the entire inside of the mill farmhouse. But she began the actual rejuvenation of the aspect of the structure in her own rooms, and had had all the work done since her return from the war zone the year before.

She now had a bedroom, a sitting room, a dressing room and bathroom up under the roof, all in white (Helen said ”like a hospital”), and when one opened Ruth's outer door and stepped into her suite it seemed as though one entered an entirely different house. And if it was a girl who entered--as Wonota, the Osage princess, did on a certain June day soon after Jennie Stone's marriage--she could not suppress a cry of delight.

Wonota had stayed before at the Red Mill for a time; but then the workmen had not completed Ruth's new nest. And although Wonota had been born in a wigwam on the plains and had spent her childhood in a log cabin with a turf roof, she could appreciate ”pretty things” quite as keenly as any girl of Ruth's acquaintance.

That was why Ruth--as well as Mr. Hammond of the Alectrion Film Corporation--believed that the Indian girl would in time become a successful screen actress. Wonota, though her skin was copper-colored, liked to dress in up-to-date clothes (and did so) and enjoyed the refinements of civilization as much as any white girl of her age.

”It is so pretty here, Miss Ruth,” she said to her mentor. ”May I sleep in the other bed off your sitting room? It is sweet of you. How foolish of people wanting to see on the screen how poor Indians live in their ignorance. I would rather learn to play the part of a very rich New York lady, and have servants and motor-cars and go to the opera and wear a diamond necklace.”

Ruth laughed at her, but good-naturedly.

”All girls are the same, I suppose, under the skin,” she said. ”But we each should try to do the things we can do best. Learn to play the parts the director a.s.signs you to the very best of your ability. Doing that will bring you, quicker than anything else, to the point where you can wear diamonds and ride in your own motor-car and go to the opera. What does your father, Chief Totantora, say to your new ideas, Wonota?”

”The chief, my father, says nothing when I talk like that to him. He is too much of an old-fas.h.i.+oned Indian, I fear. He is staying at a country hotel up the road; but he would not sleep in the room they gave him (and then he rolled up in his blanket on the floor) until they agreed to let him take out the sashes from all three windows. He says that white people have white faces because they sleep in stale air.”

”Perhaps he is more than half right,” rejoined Ruth, although she laughed too. ”Some white folks even in this age are afraid of the outdoor air as a sleeping tonic, and prefer to drug themselves with shut-in air in their bedrooms.”

”But one can have pretty things and nice things, and still remain in health,” sighed Wonota.

Ruth agreed with this. The girl of the Red Mill tried, too, in every way to encourage the Indian maiden to learn and profit by the better things to be gained by a.s.sociation with the whites.

There were several days to wait before Mr. Hammond was ready to send Mr.

Hooley, the director, and the company selected for the making of Ruth's new picture to the Thousand Islands. Meanwhile Ruth herself had many preparations to make and she could not be all the time with her visitor.

As in that past time when she had visited the Red Mill, Wonota was usually content to sit with Aunt Alvirah and make beadwork while the old woman knitted.

”She's a contented creeter, my pretty,” the old woman said to Ruth. ”Red or white, I never see such a quiet puss. And she jumps and runs to wait on me like you do.

”Oh, my back! and oh, my bones!” exclaimed Aunt Alvirah, rising cautiously with the aid of a cane she now depended upon. ”My rheumatism don't seem any better, and I have had it long enough, seems to me, for it to get better,” she added.

”Poor dear!” said Ruth. ”Don't the new medicine do any good?”

”Lawsy me, child! I've drenched myself with doctor's stuff till I'm ashamed to look a medicine bottle in the face. My worn out old carca.s.s can't be helped much by any drugs at all. I guess, as my poor old mother used to say, the only sure cure for rheumatics is graveyard mould.”

”Oh, Aunt Alvirah!”

”I don't say it complainingly,” declared the little old woman, smiling quite cheerfully. ”But I tell Jabez Potter he might as well make up his mind to seeing my corner of his hearth empty one of these days. And he'll miss me, too, cantankerous as he is sometimes.”

But Uncle Jabez was seldom ”cantankerous” nowadays when Ruth was at home.

To the miller's mind his great-niece had proved herself to be of the true Potter blood, although her name was Fielding.

Ruth was a money-maker. He had to wink pretty hard over the fact that she was likewise a money spender! But one girl--and a young one at that--could scarcely be expected (and so the old miller admitted) to combine all the virtues which were worth while in human development.

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