"Gone out with Mr. Benson," answered Ruth, with an absent sadness
in her voice and manner. Her tears, scarce checked while she
spoke, began to fall afresh; and as Sally stood and gazed she saw
the babe look hack in his mother's face, and his little lip begin
to quiver, and his open blue eye to grow overclouded, as with
some mysterious sympathy with the sorrowful face bent over him.
Sally took him briskly from his mother's arms; Ruth looked up in
grave surprise, for in truth she had forgotten Sally's presence,
and the suddenness of the motion startled her.
"My bonny boy! are they letting the salt tears drop on thy sweet
face before thou'rt weaned! Little somebody knows how to be a
mother--I could make a better myself. 'Dance, thumbkin,
dance--dance, ye merry men every one.' Ay, that's it! smile, my
pretty. Any one but a child like thee," continued she, turning to
Ruth, "would have known better than to bring ill-luck on thy
babby by letting tears fall on its face before it was weaned. But
thou'rt not fit to have a babby, and so I've said many a time.
I've a great mind to buy thee a doll, and take thy babby mysel'."
Sally did not look at Ruth, for she was too much engaged in
amusing the baby with the tassel of the string to the
window-blind, or else she would have seen the dignity which the
mother's soul put into Ruth at that moment. Sally was quelled
into silence by the gentle composure, the self-command over her
passionate sorrow, which gave to Ruth an unconscious grandeur of
demeanour as she came up to the old servant.
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