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Updated: June 14, 2025
"It certainly isn't a boy," declared her friend, with exasperation. "He'll get away from us. That is a fast car he is driving." "Wait!" exclaimed Ruth again, and as Helen brought her machine to an abrupt stop Aunt Alvirah was heard saying: "Now, ain't that reediculous? Ain't it reediculous?"
"Then I suppose the right man has never ridden up to the Red Mill and asked for you?" demanded Helen, with a glance at her chum that was rather piercing. "Perhaps he has," said Ruth composedly, "but I wasn't at home. Aunt Alvirah thinks I am almost never at home. And, girls, as I told you yesterday, I am going soon on another journey." "Oh, Ruth, I've been thinking of that!"
Ruth shrank a little and looked appealingly at the old woman. But Aunt Alvirah would not or did not, understand Ruth's pleading, and said, briskly: "She shall be ready when you've shaved and Ben's harnessed the mules, Jabez." "Oh, Auntie!" whispered Ruth, when the miller had gone out, "I don't want to go with him! I don't really!" "Now, don't say that, child," said Aunt Alvirah.
And 'tis a bad thing when young folks grow old before their time." "You're always saying that, Aunt Alvirah," Ruth complained. "But how can one be jolly if one does not feel jolly?" "My goodness!" cried Tom, "you were notoriously the jolliest girl in that French hospital. Didn't the poilus call you the jolly American? And listen to Grandmother Grunt now!" "I suppose it is so," sighed Ruth.
At the time just mentioned, the orphaned Ruth had appeared at her great-uncle's mill on the Lumano River, near Cheslow, in one of the New England States, and had been taken in by the miserly old miller rather under protest. But Aunt Alvirah Boggs, who was Uncle Jabez Potter's housekeeper, had loved the child from the very beginning.
"Don't frighten Aunt Alvirah," she whispered. Helen was delighted with any prospect for action. It must be confessed that she did not think much about disappointment or trouble accruing to other people in any set of circumstances; she never had been particularly thoughtful for others.
Helen raced up the stairs, opened the door of the big room, and then got behind it so that Ruth, coming hurriedly in, should first see the little, quivering, eager figure which had risen out of the low chair by the window. "My pretty! my pretty!" gasped Aunt Alvirah. "I seen you graduate, and I heard you sing, and I listened to your fine readin'. But, oh, my pretty, how hungry my arms are for ye!"
And after a day or two, with Ruth still "moping about like a moulting hen," as the miller expressed it, the young officer felt that he must do something to change the atmosphere of the Red Mill farmhouse. "Our morale has gone stale, girls," he declared to his sister and Ruth. "Worrying never did any good yet." "That's a true word, Sonny," said Aunt Alvirah, from her chair.
"I will make you a lot of trouble," objected Miss Gray. "No, you won't," the girl of the Red Mill repeated. "Aunt Alvirah will snuggle you down between soft, fluffy blankets, and give you hot boneset tea, or 'composition, and otherwise coddle you. To-morrow morning you will feel like a new girl." "Oh, dear!" groaned Miss Gray. "I wish I were a new girl."
Then, waving her hand to Mercy and Aunt Alvirah, she ran around to the landing. The Lumano River was a wide stream, but at this season of the year it was pretty shallow. There was little navigation from Lake Osago at any time, but now the channel was dotted with dangerous rocks, and there were even more perilous reefs just under the surface. Uncle Jabez's boat was not really a "punt."
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