Suddenly, Miss Benson called Ruth out of the room
upstairs into her own bed-chamber, and then began rummaging in
little old-fashioned boxes, drawn out of an equally old-fashioned
bureau, half-desk, half-table, and wholly drawers.
"My dear, I've been very stupid and thoughtless. Oh! I'm so glad
I thought of it before Mrs. Bradshaw came to call. Here it is!"
and she pulled out an old wedding-ring, and hurried it on Ruth's
finger. Ruth hung down her head, and reddened deep with shame;
her eyes smarted with the hot tears that filled them. Miss Benson
talked on, in a nervous hurried way--
"It was my grandmother's; it's very broad; they made them so
then, to hold a posy inside: there's one in that--
'Thine own sweetheart Till death doth part,'
I think it is. There, there! Run away, and look as if you'd
always worn it." Ruth went up to her room, and threw herself down
on her knees by the bedside, and cried as if her heart would
break; and then, as if a light had come down into her soul, she
calmed herself and prayed--no words can tell how humbly, and with
what earnest feeling. When she came down, she was tearstained and
wretchedly pale; but even Sally looked at her with new eyes,
because of the dignity with which she was invested by an
earnestness of purpose which had her child for its object. She
sat and thought, but she no longer heaved those bitter sighs
which had wrung Miss Benson's heart in the morning.
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