Ruth Read Online Free PDF Page B

conversation no longer related to the boy, she felt shy and
restrained.
    He held out his hand to shake hers, and just as she gave it to him,
the old grandmother came tottering up to ask some question. The
interruption jarred upon him, and made him once more keenly alive to
the closeness of the air, and the squalor and dirt by which he was
surrounded.
    "My good woman," said he to Nelly Brownson, "could you not keep your
place a little neater and cleaner? It is more fit for pigs than human
beings. The air in this room is quite offensive, and the dirt and
filth is really disgraceful."
    By this time he was mounted, and, bowing to Ruth, he rode away.
    Then the old woman's wrath broke out.
    "Who may you be, that knows no better manners than to come into a
poor woman's house to abuse it?—fit for pigs, indeed! What d'ye call
yon fellow?"
    "He is Mr Bellingham," said Ruth, shocked at the old woman's apparent
ingratitude. "It was he that rode into the water to save your
grandson. He would have been drowned but for Mr Bellingham. I thought
once they would both have been swept away by the current, it was so
strong."
    "The river is none so deep, either," the old woman said, anxious to
diminish as much as possible the obligation she was under to one who
had offended her. "Some one else would have saved him, if this fine
young spark had never been near. He's an orphan, and God watches over
orphans, they say. I'd rather it had been any one else as had picked
him out, than one who comes into a poor body's house only to abuse
it."
    "He did not come in only to abuse it," said Ruth, gently. "He came
with little Tom; he only said it was not quite so clean as it might
be."
    "What! you're taking up the cry, are you? Wait till you are an old
woman like me, crippled with rheumatiz, and a lad to see after like
Tom, who is always in mud when he isn't in water; and his food and
mine to scrape together (God knows we're often short, and do the best
I can), and water to fetch up that steep brow."
    She stopped to cough; and Ruth judiciously changed the subject, and
began to consult the old woman as to the wants of her grandson, in
which consultation they were soon assisted by the medical man.
    When Ruth had made one or two arrangements with a neighbour, whom she
asked to procure the most necessary things, and had heard from the
doctor that all would be right in a day or two, she began to quake
at the recollection of the length of time she had spent at Nelly
Brownson's, and to remember, with some affright, the strict watch
kept by Mrs Mason over her apprentices' out-goings and in-comings on
working days. She hurried off to the shops, and tried to recall her
wandering thoughts to the respective merits of pink and blue as a
match to lilac, found she had lost her patterns, and went home with
ill-chosen things, and in a fit of despair at her own stupidity.
    The truth was, that the afternoon's adventure filled her mind; only,
the figure of Tom (who was now safe, and likely to do well) was
receding into the background, and that of Mr Bellingham becoming
more prominent than it had been. His spirited and natural action of
galloping into the water to save the child, was magnified by Ruth
into the most heroic deed of daring; his interest about the boy
was tender, thoughtful benevolence in her eyes, and his careless
liberality of money was fine generosity; for she forgot that
generosity implies some degree of self-denial. She was gratified,
too, by the power of dispensing comfort he had entrusted to her,
and was busy with Alnaschar visions of wise expenditure, when the
necessity of opening Mrs Mason's house-door summoned her back into
actual present life, and the dread of an immediate scolding.
    For this time, however, she was spared; but spared for such a reason
that she would have been thankful for some blame in preference to
her impunity. During her absence, Jenny's difficulty of breathing
had suddenly become worse, and the girls had, on their own
responsibility,