NOT quite seventeen years later, on a fine June morning, Ruth Warham issued hastily from the house and started down the long tanbark walk from the front veranda to the street gate.She was now nineteen--nearer twenty--and a very pretty young woman, indeed.She had grown up one of those small slender blondes, exquisite and doll-like, who cannot help seeming fresh and sweet, whatever the truth about them, without or within.This morning she had on a new summer dress of a blue that matched her eyes and harmonized with her coloring.She was looking her best, and she had the satisfying, confidence-giving sense that it was so.Like most of the unattached girls of small towns, she was always dreaming of the handsome stranger who would fall in love--the thrilling, love-story kind of love at first sight.The weather plays a conspicuous part in the romancings of youth; she felt that this was precisely the kind of day fate would be most likely to select for the meeting.Just before dressing she had been reading about the wonderful _him_--in Robert Chambers'
latest story--and she had spent full fifteen minutes of blissful reverie over the accompanying Fisher illustration.Now she was issuing hopefully forth, as hopefully as if adventure were the rule and order of life in Sutherland, instead of a desperate monotony made the harder to bear by the glory of its scenery.
She had got only far enough from the house to be visible to the second-story windows when a young voice called:
"Ruthie! Aren't you going to wait for me?"
Ruth halted; an expression anything but harmonious with the pretty blue costume stormed across her face."I won't have her along!" she muttered."I simply won't!" She turned slowly and, as she turned, effaced every trace of temper with a dexterity which might have given an onlooker a poorer opinion of her character than perhaps the facts as to human nature justify.The countenance she presently revealed to those upper windows was sunny and sweet.No one was visible; but the horizontal slats in one of the only closed pair of shutters and a vague suggestion of movement rather than form behind them gave the impression that a woman, not far enough dressed to risk being seen from the street, was hidden there.Evidently Ruth knew, for it was toward this window that she directed her gaze and the remark: "Can't wait, dear.I'm in a great hurry.Mamma wants the silk right away and I've got to match it.""But I'll be only a minute," pleaded the voice--a much more interesting, more musical voice than Ruth's rather shrill and thin high soprano.
"No--I'll meet you up at papa's store."
"All right."
Ruth resumed her journey.She smiled to herself."That means,"said she, half aloud, "I'll steer clear of the store this morning."But as she was leaving the gate into the wide, shady, sleepy street, who should come driving past in a village cart but Lottie Wright! And Lottie reined her pony in to the sidewalk and in the shade of a symmetrical walnut tree proceeded to invite Ruth to a dance--a long story, as Lottie had to tell all about it, the decorations, the favors, the food, who would be there, what she was going to wear, and so on and on.Ruth was intensely interested but kept remembering something that caused her to glance uneasily from time to time up the tanbark walk under the arching boughs toward the house.Even if she had not been interested, she would hardly have ventured to break off; Lottie Wright was the only daughter of the richest man in Sutherland and, therefore, social arbiter to the younger set.
Lottie stopped abruptly, said: "Well, I really must get on.And there's your cousin coming down the walk.I know you've been waiting for her."Ruth tried to keep in countenance, but a blush of shame and a frown of irritation came in spite of her.
"I'm sorry I can't ask Susie, too," pursued Lottie, in a voice of hypocritical regret."But there are to be exactly eighteen couples--and I couldn't.""Of course not," said Ruth heartily."Susan'll understand.""I wouldn't for the world do anything to hurt her feelings,"continued Lottie with the self-complacent righteousness of a deacon telling the congregation how good "grace" has made him.
Her prominent commonplace brown eyes were gazing up the walk, an expression distressingly like envious anger in them.She had a thick, pudgy face, an oily skin, an outcropping of dull red pimples on the chin.Many women can indulge their passion for sweets at meals and sweets between meals without serious injury--to complexion; Lottie Wright, unluckily, couldn't.
"I feel sorry for Susie," she went on, in the ludicrous patronizing tone that needs no describing to anyone acquainted with any fashionable set anywhere from China to Peru."And Ithink the way you all treat her is simply beautiful.But, then, everybody feels sorry for her and tries to be kind.She knows--about herself, I mean--doesn't she, Ruthie?""I guess so," replied Ruth, almost hanging her head in her mortification."She's very good and sweet.""Indeed, she is," said Lottie."And father says she's far and away the prettiest girl in town."With this parting shot, which struck precisely where she had aimed, Lottie gathered up the reins and drove on, calling out a friendly "Hello, Susie dearie," to Susan Lenox, who, on her purposely lagging way from the house, had nearly reached the gate.
"What a nasty thing Lottie Wright is!" exclaimed Ruth to her cousin.
