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She had reached the bed ere this and had gathered the sobbing girl into her arms. She sat upon the side of the bed and rocked Ruth to and fro, with her arms about her. She did not say much more, but her unspoken sympathy was wonderfully comforting. Aunt Alvirah did not criticise Uncle Jabez's course. She never did.
Then she went straight to him and, as his irritated face came out of the huck towel, she put both arms around his neck and kissed him on his grizzled cheek. This sort of treatment always closed her Uncle Jabez's lips for a time. There seemed no answer to be made to such an argument and Ruth did love the crusty old man and was grateful to him.
I think we'd better do what there is to do, and clear out of this as quick as we know how, and mebbe some of us will wish before an hour's gone that we had Uncle Jabez's knack at makin' out a good story." "You speak for yourself, Dickey," said Mr. Crumlish good-naturedly.
The east bedroom was at the end of the passage leading from the kitchen. It was right next to Uncle Jabez's own room. They all sat in the east room that evening, for its windows opened upon the wide, honeysuckle-shaded porch, and the breeze was cool. He did not talk much.
She kissed Aunt Alvirah once more, waved her hand to bashful Ben, who was Uncle Jabez's man-of-all-work, and ran down to the waiting car. In the seat beside the chauffeur was a bright-looking, black-haired boy in a military uniform of blue, who seized her lunch basket and handbag and put them both in a safe place.
John Eddle, a staunch upholder of the C. and P.P., would enter Jabez's store and hit him in the face because he'd sent a tin of sardines to the Furdlehoe Mansion on the other side of the River.
Ruth, not minding her Uncle Jabez's strictures, went about setting the supper table with puckered lips, whistling softly. This last was an accomplishment she had picked up from Tom long ago. "And whistling gals is the wust of all!" snarled Jabez Potter, from the sink, where he had just taken his face out of the soapsuds bath he always gave it before sitting down to table.
Then, out came the story of the lost trunk. Nor could Ruth keep back the tears as she told her friend about Uncle Jabez's cruelty. "Oh, oh, oh!" cried Helen, almost weeping herself. "The mean, mean thing! No, I won't call him Ogre again; he isn't as good as an Ogre. I I don't know what to call him!" "Calling him names won't bring back my trunk, Helen," sobbed Ruth. "That's so.
One is Aunt Alvirah Boggs, who is nobody's relation but everybody's aunt, and whom Jabez Potter, the miller, has taken from the poorhouse to keep his home tidy and comfortable. Aunt Alvirah sees the good underlying miserly Uncle Jabez's character when nobody else can.
Ruth, herself torn by conflicting emotions, could not bear to see the old man so convulsed with what seemed to be anguish of spirit, without offering her sympathy. During this week that she had been at the Red Mill it could not be said that she had gained Uncle Jabez's confidence that she had drawn close to him at all. But it was not for a will on her part to do so.
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