"Of course you don"t," cut in Ruth, ruffled by the perilously narrow escape from being the laughing stock of the town. "People aren"t as big fools as they used to be, mamma. They don"t believe nowadays everything that"s told them. There isn"t anybody that doesn"t know I"m never sick. No--we"ll have to----"
She reflected a moment, pausing halfway down the stairs, while her mother watched her swollen and tear-stained face.
"We might send Susan away for the evening," suggested the mother.
"Yes," a.s.sented the daughter. "Papa could take her with him for a drive to North Sutherland--to see the Provosts. Then Sam"d come straight on to the Sinclairs"."
"I"ll call up your father."
"No!" cried Ruth, stamping her foot. "Call up Mr. Provost, and tell him papa"s coming. Then you can talk with papa when he gets home to dinner."
"But maybe----"
"If that doesn"t work out we can do something else this afternoon."
The mother and the daughter avoided each other"s eyes. Both felt mean and small, guilty toward Susan; but neither was for that reason disposed to draw back. As Mrs. Warham was trying the new dress on her daughter, she said:
"Anyhow, Sam"d be wasting time on Susan. He"d hang round her for no good. She"d simply get talked about. The poor child can"t be lively or smile but what people begin to wonder if she"s going the way of--of Lorella."
"That"s so," agreed Ruth, and both felt better. "Was Aunt Lorella _very_ pretty, mamma?"
"Lovely!" replied f.a.n.n.y, and her eyes grew tender, for she had adored Lorella. "You never saw such a complexion--like Susan"s, only snow-white." Nervously and hastily, "Most as fine as yours, Ruthie."
Ruth gazed complacently into the mirror. "I"m glad I"m fair, and not big," said she.
"Yes, indeed! I like the womanly woman. And so do men."
"Don"t you think we ought to send Susan away to visit somewhere?" asked Ruth at the next opportunity for talk the fitting gave. "It"s getting more and more--pointed--the way people act. And she"s so sweet and good, I"d hate to have her feelings hurt." In a burst of generosity, "She"s the most considerate human being I ever knew. She"d give up anything rather than see someone else put out. She"s too much that way."
"We can"t be too much that way," said Mrs. Warham in mechanical Christian reproof.
"Oh, I know," retorted Ruth, "that"s all very well for church and Sundays. But I guess if you want to get along you"ve got to look out for Number One. . . . Yes, she ought to visit somewhere."
"I"ve been trying to think," said her mother. "She couldn"t go any place but your Uncle Zeke"s. But it"s so lonesome out there I haven"t the heart to send her. Besides, she wouldn"t know what to make of it."
"What"d father say?"
"That"s another thing." Mrs. Warham had latterly grown jealous--not without reason--of her husband"s partiality for Susan.
Ruth sighed. "Oh, dear!" cried she. "I don"t know what to do.
How"s she ever going to get married!"
"If she"d only been a boy!" said Mrs. Warham, on her knees, taking the unevenness out of the front of the skirt. "A girl has to suffer for her mother"s sins."
Ruth made no reply. She smiled to herself--the comment of the younger generation upon the older. Sin it might have been; but, worse than that, it was a stupidity--to let a man make a fool of her. Lorella must have been a poor weak-minded creature.
By dinner time Ruth had completely soothed and smoothed her vanity. Sam had been caught by Susan simply because he had seen Susan before he saw her.
All that would be necessary was a good chance at him, and he would never look at Susan again. He had been in the East, where the admired type was her own--refined, ladylike, the woman of the dainty appearance and manners and tastes. A brief undisturbed exposure to her charms and Susan would seem coa.r.s.e and countrified to him. There was no denying that Susan had style, but it was fully effective only when applied to a sunny fairy-like beauty such as hers.
But at midday, when Susan came in with Warham, Ruth"s jealousy opened all her inward-bleeding wounds again. Susan"s merry eyes, her laughing mouth, her funny way of saying even commonplace things--how could quiet, un.o.btrusive, ladylike charms such as Ruth"s have a chance if Susan were about? She waited, silent and anxious, while her mother was having the talk with her father in the sitting-room. Warham, mere man, was amused by his wife"s scheming.
"Don"t put yourself out, f.a.n.n.y," said he. "If the boy wants Ruth and she wants him, why, well and good. But you"ll only make a mess interfering. Let the young people alone."
"I"m surprised, George Warham," cried f.a.n.n.y, "that you can show so little sense and heart."
"To hear you talk, I"d think marriage was a business, like groceries."
Mrs. Warham thought it was, in a sense. But she would never have dared say so aloud, even to her husband--or, rather, especially to her husband. In matters of men and women he was thoroughly innocent, with the simplicity of the old-time man of the small town and the country; he fancied that, while in grocery matters and the like the world was full of guile, in matters of the heart it was idyllic, Arcadian, with never a thought of duplicity, except among a few obviously wicked and designing people.
"I guess we both want to see Ruth married well," was all she could venture.
"I"d rather the girls stayed with us," declared Warham. "I"d hate to give them up."
"Of course," hastily agreed f.a.n.n.y. "Still--it"s the regular order of nature."
"Oh, Ruth"ll marry--only too soon," said Warham. "And marry well. I"m not so sure, though, that marrying any of old Wright"s breed would be marrying what ought to be called well. Money isn"t everything--not by a long sight--though, of course, it"s comfortable."
"I never heard anything against Sam," protested Mrs. Warham.
"You"ve heard what I"ve heard--that he"s wild and loose. But then you women like that in a man."
"We"ve got to put up with it, you mean," cried f.a.n.n.y, indignant.
"Women like it," persisted Warham. "And I guess Sam"s only sowing the usual wild oats, getting ready to settle. No, mother, you let Ruth alone. If she wants him, she"ll get him--she or Susan."
Mrs. Warham compressed her lips and lowered her eyes. Ruth or Susan--as if it didn"t matter which! "Susan isn"t _ours_," she could not refrain from saying.
"Indeed, she is!" retorted George warmly. "Why, she couldn"t be more our own----"
"Yes, certainly," interrupted f.a.n.n.y.
She moved toward the door. She saw that without revealing her entire scheme--hers and Ruth"s--she could make no headway with George. And if she did reveal it he would sternly veto it. So she gave up that direction. She went upstairs; George took his hat from the front hall rack and pushed open the screen door. As he appeared on the veranda Susan was picking dead leaves from one of the hanging baskets; Ruth, seated in the hammock, hands in lap, her whole att.i.tude intensely still, was watching her with narrowed eyes.
"What"s this I hear," cried Warham, laughing, "about you two girls setting your caps for Sam Wright?" And his good-humored brown eyes glanced at Ruth, pa.s.sed on to Susan"s wealth of wavy dark hair and long, rounded form, and lingered there.
Ruth lowered her eyes and compressed her lips, a trick she had borrowed from her mother along with the peculiarities of her mother"s disposition that it fitted. Susan flung a laughing glance over her shoulder at her uncle. "Not Ruth," said she.
"Only me. I saw him first, so he"s mine. He"s coming to see me this evening."
"So I hear. Well, the moon"s full and your aunt and I"ll not interrupt--at least not till ten o"clock. No callers on a child like you after ten."
"Oh, I don"t think I"ll be able to hold him that long."
"Don"t you fret, Brownie. But I mustn"t make you vain. Coming along to the store?"
"No. Tomorrow," said Susan. "I can finish in the morning. I"m going to wear my white dress with embroidery, and it"s got to be pressed--and that means I must do it myself."
"Poor Sam! And I suppose, when he calls, you"ll come down as if you"d put on any old thing and didn"t care whether he came or not. And you"ll have primped for an hour--and he, too--shaving and combing and trying different ties."