"Give him back to me, please. I did not know it brought ill-luck,
or if my heart broke I would not have let a tear drop on his
face--I never will again. Thank you, Sally," as the servant
relinquished him to her who came in the name of a mother. Sally
watched Ruth's grave, sweet smile, as she followed up Sally's
play with the tassel, and imitated, with all the docility
inspired by love, every movement and sound which had amused her
babe.
"Thou'lt be a mother, after all," said Sally, with a kind of
admiration of the control which Ruth was exercising over herself.
"But why talk of thy heart breaking? I don't question thee about
what's past and gone; but now thou'rt wanting for nothing, nor
thy child either; the time to come is the Lord's and in His
hands; and yet thou goest about a-sighing and a-moaning in a way
that I can't stand or thole."
"What do I do wrong?" said Ruth; "I try to do all I can."
"Yes, in a way," said Sally, puzzled to know how to describe her
meaning. "Thou dost it--but there's a right and a wrong way of
setting about everything--and to my thinking, the right way is to
take a thing up heartily, if it is only making a bed. Why! dear
ah me, making a bed may be done after a Christian fashion, I take
it, or else what's to come of such as me in heaven, who've had
little enough time on earth for clapping ourselves down on our
knees for set prayers? When I was a girl, and wretched enough
about Master Thurstan, and the crook on his back which came of
the fall I gave him, I took to praying and sighing, and giving up
the world; and I thought it were wicked to care for the flesh, so
I made heavy puddings, and was careless about dinner and the
rooms, and thought I was doing my duty, though I did call myself
a miserable sinner.
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