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Updated: June 14, 2025
Then came the sound of a shuffling step. The moonlight lay in a broad band under the front window. Into this radiance moved the figure of the vagabond boy, shrouded in a blanket. He came to the table and he felt around until he found the wallet. He had doubtless marked it lying there by the window before Aunt Alvirah had put the lamp out and left him. He seized the wallet and opened it wide.
Ruth took the tray into the bedroom with the supper that Aunt Alvirah had prepared. There was a flaming red spot in the center of each of the boy's pallid cheeks, and his eyes were still bright. He had no little fever after the chill of his plunge into the creek. But the fever might have been as much from a mental as a physical cause. It was on Ruth's lips to ask the boy certain questions.
Grasping, like any talented writer does, at any straw of novelty, Ruth had seen possibilities in the little incident Aunt Alvirah had told about her ancestor who had crossed the Western plains in the early emigrant days. She meant to open her story with a similar incident, as a prologue to the actual play.
"Helen Cam'ron wouldn't have been called on to give Ruthie her frocks which she only wore last year, and outgrew, if you hadn't lost Ruthie's trunk. Ye know that, Jabez," urged Aunt Alvirah. "I s'pose I'm never to hear the last of that!" stormed the miller. "You are still to hear the first word from Ruthie about it, Jabez," admonished his housekeeper. "Well!"
In a cove below the river bank, however, Ruth caught a glimpse of a small motor-boat with two men in it. And backed into a wood's path near the highway was a small motor-car. Was it the smart roadster Mr. Horatio Bilby had driven to the Red Mill? Ruth could not be sure. But she did not enjoy the ride with Helen and Aunt Alvirah very much for thinking of the possibility of its being Mr.
When Uncle Jabez came in to supper that evening his scowl was heavier than usual, if that were possible, and he did not speak to either Ruth or Aunt Alvirah all the evening. Ruth thought it all over, and she came to this conclusion: Uncle Jabez had given his permission albeit a grumpy one and she would begin school on Monday.
Aunt Alvirah was still in the bedroom with their strange guest. Of a sudden the girl's eye caught sight of the newspaper clipping laid on the window sill to dry. Mr. Cameron had placed the old wallet belonging to Fred Hatfield's father on the table when he came out of the bedroom. Now Ruth picked it up, found it dry, and went to the window to replace the clipping in it.
"You mean on this morning train?" responded the plumper and more mature-looking girl, whose frank face was particularly attractive. "Yes." "Then Tom said he would go back to meet the evening train and we'll go with him," said Ruth Fielding, with a smile. "But I could not go this morning and leave poor Aunt Alvirah all these beans to shell." "Of course not," agreed her friend, promptly.
"Ah, Jabez," Aunt Alvirah said, as they watched Ruth get into the Cameron automobile to be whisked away to the station, and so to Briarwood for her second half, "that's where our endurin' comfort an' hope is centered for our old age. We've only got Ruthie." "She's a mighty expensive piece of property," snarled the old man. "Ye don't mean it, Jabez, ye don't mean it," she returned, softly.
"What do you reckon your folks will say, Miss?" groaned the injured youth. And even Helen and Tom looked surprised. "Aunt Alvirah will nurse you," laughed Ruth. "As for Uncle Jabez " "It will do Uncle Jabez good," put in Dr. Davison, confidently. "That's right, Ruthie. You take him along to your house.
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