“Uncle Jabez has a prickly rind, I guess,” said Ruth. “But the meat inside is sweet. Only he’s old-fashioned and he can’t get used to new-fashioned ways. He doesn’t see any reason for my ‘traipsing around’ so much. I ought to be at the mill between schooltimes, helping Aunt Alvirah – so he says. And I am afraid he is right. I feel condemned – ”
“You’re too tender-hearted. Helen says he’s as rich as can be and might hire a dozen girls to help ‘Aunt Alviry’.”
“He might, but he wouldn’t,” returned Ruth, smiling. “I can’t tell you yet for sure that I can go to Sunrise Farm. I’d love to. I’ve always heard ’twas a beautiful place.”
“And it is, indeed! It’s going to be the finest gentleman’s estate in that section, when father gets through with it. He’s going to make it a great, big, paying farm – so he says. If it wasn’t for that man Caslon, we’d own the whole hill all the way around, as well as the top of it.”
“Who’s that?” asked Ruth, surprised that Madge should speak so sharply about the unknown Caslon.
“Why, he owns one of the farms adjoining. Father’s bought all the neighbors up but Caslon. He won’t sell. But I reckon father will find a way to make him, before he gets through. Father usually carries his point,” added Madge, with much pride in Mr. Steele’s business acumen.
Uncle Jabez had not yet said Ruth could go with the crowd to the Steeles’ summer home; Aunt Alvirah wrote that he was “studyin’ about it.” But there was so much to do at Briarwood as the end of the school year approached, that the girl of the Red Mill had little time to worry about the subject.
Although Ruth and Helen Cameron were far from graduation themselves, they both had parts of some prominence in the exercises which were to close the year at Briarwood Hall. Ruth was in a quartette selected from the Glee Club for some special music, and Helen had a small violin solo part in one of the orchestral numbers.
Not many of the juniors, unless they belonged to either the school orchestra or the Glee Club, would appear to much advantage at graduation. The upper senior class was in the limelight – and Madge Steele was the only one of Ruth’s close friends who was to receive her diploma.
“We who aren’t seniors have to sit around like bumps on a log,” growled Heavy. “Might as well go home for good the day before.”
“You should have learned to play, or sing, or something,” advised one of the other girls, laughing at Heavy’s apparently woebegone face.
“Did you ever hear me try to sing, Lluella?” demanded the plump young lady. “I like music myself – I’m very fond of it, no matter how it sounds! But I can’t even stand my own chest-tones.”
Preparations for the great day went on apace. There was to be a professional director for the augmented orchestra and he insisted, because of the acoustics of the hall, upon building an elevated extension to the stage, upon which to stand to conduct the music.
“Gee!” gasped Heavy, when she saw it the first time. “What’s the diving-board for?”
“That’s not a diving-board,” snapped Mercy Curtis. “It’s the lookout station for the captain to watch the high C’s.”
The bustle and confusion of departure punctuated the final day of the term, too. There were so many girls to say good-bye to for the summer; and some, of course, would never come back to Briarwood Hall again – as scholars, at least.
In the midst of the excitement Ruth received a letter in the crabbed hand of dear old Aunt Alvirah. The old lady enclosed a small money order, fearing that Ruth might not have all the money she needed for her home-coming. But the best item in the letter beside the expression of Aunt Alvirah’s love, was the statement that “Your Uncle Jabe, he’s come round to agreeing you should go to that Sunrise Farm place with your young friends. I made him let me hire a tramping girl that came by, and we got the house all rid up, so when you come home, my pretty, all you got to do is to visit.”
“And I will visit with her – the unselfish old dear!” Ruth told herself. “Dear me! how very, very good everybody is to me. But I am afraid poor Uncle Jabez wouldn’t be so kind if he wasn’t influenced by Aunt Alvirah.”
CHAPTER V – “THE TRAMPING GAL”
The old clock that had hung in the Red Mill kitchen from the time of Uncle Jabez Potter’s grandfather – and that was early time on the Lumano, indeed! – hesitatingly tolled the hour of four.
Daybreak was just behind the eastern hills. A light mist swathed the silent current of the river. Here and there, along the water’s edge, a tall tree seemed floating in the air, its bole and roots cut off by the drifting mist.
“Oh, it is very, very beautiful here!” sighed Ruth Fielding, kneeling at the open window and looking out upon the awakening world – as she had done many and many another early morning since first she was given this little gable-windowed room for her very own.
The sweet, clean, cool air breathed in upon her bare throat and shoulders, revealed through the lace trimming of her night robe. Ruth loved linen like other girls, and although Uncle Jabez gave her spending money with a rather niggardly hand, she and Aunt Alvirah knew how to make the pennies “go a long way” in purchasing and making her gowns and undergarments.
There lay over a chair, too, a pretty, light blue, silk trimmed crepe-cloth kimona, with warm, fur-edged slippers to match, on the floor. The moment she heard Uncle Jabez rattle the stove-shaker in the kitchen, Ruth slipped into this robe, and thrust her bare feet into the slippers. Her braids she drew over her shoulders – one on either side – as she hurried out of the little chamber and down the back stairs.
She had arrived home from Briarwood the night before. For more than eight months she had seen neither Uncle Jabez nor Aunt Alvirah; and she had been so tired and sleepy on her arrival that she had quickly gone to bed. She felt as though she had scarcely greeted the two old people.
Uncle Jabez was bending over the kitchen stove. He always looked gray of face, and dusty. The mill-dust seemed ground into both his clothes and his complexion.
The first the old man knew of her presence, the arms of Ruth were around his neck.
“Ugh-huh?” questioned the old man, raising up stiffly as the fire began to chatter, the flames flashing under the lids, and turned to face the girl who held him so lovingly. “What’s wanted, Niece Ruth?” he added, looking at her grimly under his bristling brows.
Ruth was not afraid of his grimness. She had learned long since that Uncle Jabez was much softer under the surface than he appeared. He claimed to be only just to her; but Ruth knew that his “justice” often leaned toward the side of mercy.
Her mother, Mary Potter, had been the miller’s favorite niece; when she had married Ruth’s father, Uncle Jabez had been angry, and for years the family had been separated. But when Uncle Jabez had taken Ruth in “just out of charity,” old Aunt Alvirah had assured the heartsick girl that the miller was kinder at heart than he wished people to suppose.
“He don’t never let his right hand know what his left hand doeth,” declared the loyal little old woman who had been so long housekeeper for the miller. “He saved me from the poorhouse – yes, he did! – jest to git all the work out o’ me he could – to hear him tell it!
“But it ain’t so,” quoth Aunt Alvirah, shaking her head. “He saw a lone ol’ woman turned out o’ what she’d thought would be her home till she come to death’s door. An’ so he opened his house and his hand to her. An’ he’s opened his house and hand to you, my pretty; and who knows? mebbe ’twill open wide his heart, too.”
Ruth had been hoping the old man’s heart was open, not only to her, but to the whole world. She knew that, in secret, Uncle Jabez was helping to pay Mercy Curtis’s tuition at Briarwood. He still loved money; he always would love it, in all probability. But he had learned to “loosen up,” as Tom Cameron expressed