THE AMATEUR LOVER
met the Housekeeper scuttling along the halls on the same sniffy errand. Once with a flickering candle- light Ruth herself crept out to the doorway and laughed at them. "The house is n t on fire, you sillies," she cried. "Don t you know a burnt bridge when you smell it? " But the doctor had said quite distinctly :"You must watch that little girl. Sor- row in the tongue will talk itself cured, if you give it a chance; but sorrow in the eyes has a wicked, wicked way now and then of leaking into the brain."
It was the Housekeeper, though, whose eyes looked worried and tortured at breakfast time. It was the Big Brother's face that showed a bit sharp on the cheek-bones. Ruth herself, for the first time in a listless, uncollared, unbelted, unstarched month, came frisking down to the table as white and fresh and crisp as linen and starch and curls could make her.
"I'm going to town this morning," she an- nounced nonchalantly to her relieved and delighted hearers. The eyes that turned to her brother's were almost mischievous. "Could n t you meet me at twelve o'clock,"she suggested, " and take me off to the shore somewhere for lunch ? I'll be shopping on Main Street about that time, so suppose I meet you at Andrew Bernard's office."
Half an hour later she was stealing out of the
198
