Part 4 (1/2)
”O, nothing Ruth; please wait until I breathe;” and she tried to get up a laugh. ”I did not know I was so out of breath. If you wait a minute, I will explain,” for Ruth was beginning to protest that something was wrong.
”There now,” she said, removing her hat, and leaning back in the rocking chair, ”I am ready to put your fears to rest.” Then followed an account of the accident and her visit to the family.
”See here, Agnes, it is all very well to sympathize with people in distress, when you don't have to sacrifice yourself; but you are not called upon to do more than you are able to perform. And it is quite enough for you to teach school, without running to see all the youngsters whose fathers get tipsy and break their legs,” was the opinion Guy gave after hearing her story.
”What do you charge for advice, Mr. Lawyer?” she asked, laughingly, as springing up she advanced to the table and begged Ruth to hurry with the tea, for she was ”as hungry as a hawk.”
Guy followed, declaring that ”if all clients were as self-willed and independent as she, the lawyers might pull down their s.h.i.+ngles, take a last look at c.o.ke and Blackstone and then----”
”Well, and then?”--queried Ruth, very much amused.
”Why----then go to gra.s.s.”
”Little boys should not use slang,” said Agnes, demurely.
”Neither should little girls act contrary to the wishes of their big brother,” was the reply.
After a blessing had been silently asked, Agnes said:
”Do you really think I am self-willed, Guy?”
”Of course I do; it does not require a knowledge of law to decide that.”
”How do I show it? I never meant to be so.”
”Well, you succeed pretty well if you don't. I should not like to see you make the effort, if that is the case. How do you show it? Why, by thinking you know better than other people. Don't she, Ruth, and acting out her thoughts?”
”You are partly right and partly wrong,” was the reply. ”Agnes is not in the least self-willed. It is I who may be called that. In this you are wrong. You are right in saying she acts out her thoughts; but you give a wrong reason. It is not because she thinks she knows better than others. She does not trust her own judgment nearly as much as either you or I.”
”Now don't you begin to be mysterious, Ruth, if she don't, whose does she trust?”
”The Lord's.”
”Oh!” and Guy had no more to say. Agnes could have embraced her sister then. She wanted to say something to Guy about Ruth, because she knew her better than even he or any one could know her. But he was so silent now, perhaps this was not the best time. Guy ate a little, Agnes thought, and she did not feel so hungry after all; so when Ruth had finished she said: ”Let me wash the tea things myself to night, Ruth, I have not been doing anything all day. I will be ready in time for church.” She plead as eagerly as if asking a great favor, and Ruth amused at her childishness, with a warning about not placing the gla.s.ses in too hot water, ran up stairs, little thinking of the effect her words had either upon the one for whom they were spoken, or the one to whom they were addressed.
”If we had Martha Nelson, she could do so much for Ruth when I am at school,” thought Agnes. ”But the money, where is that to come from?”
Turning it over and over in her mind, she could see no possibility of having Martha, but somehow there was an impression that Martha should be with them. On the way to church, she decided to speak to Ruth about it.
”Did you ever have impressions that certain things _should_ be, Ruth, and yet the things seemed impossible?”
”I scarcely understand you,” Ruth replied. ”What kind of things?
spiritual?”
”No, spiritual impressions of temporal things, I suppose. But this is why I ask.” Then she told of Martha's mother wanting to find a place for her, and of the impression amounting almost to a conviction that she was to come to them. ”Only I can't see where the money is to come from.”
”How much does her mother want a week?” asked Ruth, thoughtfully; for when Agnes had these impressions, they generally had weight with her sister. Indeed she sometimes felt as if the Lord told their Agnes more than almost any other Christian; that she was peculiarly favored of G.o.d.