Jonathan had no mind for any such "foolishness."  He had won, and was
content; and running didn't become the dignity of a grown man.
"We didn't run at Louisbourg, I guess." George echoed him.  George could
out-tire even Jonathan at wood-cutting, but had no length of leg.

But Ruth having compassion on the boy's hurt feelings, persuaded them.
They could refuse no straight request of hers.  She pointed to an
outlying elm that marked the boundary of the second pasture field beyond
the steading.  This should be the turning-post, and would give them a
course well over half a mile, with a water-jump to be crossed twice.
She ranged them in line, and dropped her handkerchief for signal.

They were off.  She stood with the sun at her back and watched the race.
George, of the short legs, broad shoulders, and bullet head, was a
sprinter (as we call it nowadays) and shot at once to the front, with
Homer not far behind, and Increase disputing the third place with
Lemuel.  Jonathan and William made scarcely a show of competing.
The eldest lad, indeed, coming to the brook, did not attempt to jump,
but floundered heavily through it, scrambled up the farther bank, and
lumbered on in hopeless pursuit.  It was here that Lemuel's long easy
stride asserted itself, and taking first place he reached the tree with
several yards' lead.

"He will win at his ease now," said Ruth to herself; and just at that
moment her ears caught the sound of a horse's footfall.  She turned; but
the sun shone full in her eyes, and not for a second or two did she
recognise her visitor, Mr. Silk.

He was on horseback, and, stooping from his saddle, was endeavouring
just now--but very unhandily--to unhasp the gate with the crook of his
riding-whip.  Ruth did not offer to go to his help.

He managed it at last, thrust the horse through by vigorous use of his
knees, and was riding straight up to the house.  But just then he caught
sight of her, changed his course, and came towards her at a walk.

"Ah, good-morning!" he called.

"Good-morning."

He dismounted.  "Thought I'd ride over and pay you a call.  The ladies
will not be starting on their return journey for another couple of
hours.  So I borrowed a horse."

"Evidently."

"There's something wrong with him, I doubt."  Mr. Silk was disagreeably
red and moist.

"I dare say he is not used to being ridden mainly--or was it wholly?--on
the curb."

He grinned.  "Well, and I'm not used to riding, and that's a fact.
But"--he leered the compliment--"there are few dangers I would not
brave for a glance from Miss Josselin."

"You flatter me, sir.  But I believe you braved a worse, yesterday,
without claiming that reward."

"Ah!  You mean that Sir Oliver will be angry when he gets wind of our
little expedition?  The ladies persuaded me--Adam's old excuse; I can
deny nothing to the sex. . . . But what have we yonder?  A race?"

"It would appear so."

"A very hollow one, if I may criticise.  That youngster moves like a
deer. . . . And what is his reward to be?--another glance of these
bright eyes?  Ah, Miss Josselin, you make fools--and heroes--of us all!"

Ruth turned from him to applaud young Lemuel, who came darting into the
enclosure.

"See old Jonathan!" panted the boy, looking back and laughing.
"That's how they ran at Louisbourg. . . . Miss Josselin, you should have
made it a mile and I'd have shown you some broken-winded ones."
He laughed again and turned in apology to Mr. Silk.  "I'll take your
horse to stable, sir, if you'll let me catch my breath."

The others came straggling up, a little abashed at sight of the
stranger, but not surprised out of their good manners.

"A clergyman?" said Jonathan.  "My father will be home before sundown,
sir.  He will be proud if you can stay and have dinner with us."

Mr. Silk explained that he had ridden over from Natchett to call on Miss
Josselin and had but an hour to spare.  They insisted, however, that he
must eat before leaving, and they led away his horse to bait, leaving
him and Ruth together.

"Will you come into the house?" she asked.

"With your leave we can talk better here. . . . So you guessed that I
made one of the party?  Miss Vyell told me."

"It was not difficult to guess."

"And you admired my courage?"

Ruth's eyebrows went up to a fine arch.  "When you were careful to keep
in hiding?"

"From motives of delicacy, believe me.  It occurred to me that Lady
Caroline might--er--speak her mind, and I had no wish to be distressed
by it, or to distress you with my presence."

"I thank you for so much delicacy, sir."

"But Lady Caroline--let us do her justice!  She calls a spade a spade,
but there's no malice in it.  You stood up to her, I gather.  We've been
discussing you this morning, and you may take my word she don't think
the worse of you for it.  They're sportsmen, these high-born people.
I come of good family myself, and know the sort.  'Slog and take a
slogging; shake hands and no bad blood'--that's their way.  The fine old
British way, after all."  Mr. Silk puffed his cheeks and blew.

"You have been discussing me with Lady Caroline?"

"Yes," he answered flatly.  "Yes," he repeated, and rolled his eyes.
"All for your good, you know.  Of course she started by calling you
names and taking the worst for granted.  But I wouldn't have _that_."

"Go on, sir, if you please."

"I wouldn't have it, because I didn't believe it.  If I did--hang it!--
I shouldn't be here.  You might do me that justice."

"Why _are_ you here?"

"I'm coming to that; but first I want you to open your eyes to the
position.  You may think it's all very pretty and romantic and like Fair
Rosamond--without the frailty as yet: that's granted.  But how will it
end?  Eh?  That's the question, if you'd bring your common sense to
bear on it."

"Suppose you help me, sir," said Ruth meekly.

"That's right.  I'm here to help, and in more ways than one. . . .
Well, I know Sir Oliver; Lady Caroline knows him too; and if it's
marriage you're after, you might as well whistle the moon.  You don't
believe me?" he wound up, for she was eyeing him with an inscrutable
smile.

She lifted her shoulder a little.  "For the sake of your argument we
will say that it is so."

"Then what's to be the end? I repeat.  Look here, missy.  We spar a bit
when we meet, you and I; but I'd be sorry to see you go the way you're
going.  'Pon my honour I would.  You're as pretty a piece of flesh as a
man could find on this side of the Atlantic, and what's a sharp tongue
but a touch of spice to it?  Piquancy, begad, to a fellow like me! . . .
And--what's best of all, perhaps--you'd pass for a lady anywhere."

She shrank back a pace before this incredible vulgarity; but not even
yet did she guess the man's drift.

"So I put it to you, why not?" he continued, flushing as he came to the
point and contemplated his prey.  "You don't see yourself as a parson's
wife, eh?  You're not the cut.  But for that matter _I'm_ not the
ordinary cut of parson.  T'other side of the water we'd fly high.
They'll not have heard of Port Nassau, over there, nor of the little
nest at Sabines; and with Lady Caroline to give us a jump-off--I have
her promise.  She runs a Chapel of her own, somewhere off St. James's.
Give me a chance to preach to the fashionable--let me get a foot inside
the pulpit door--and, with you to turn their heads in the Mall below,
strike me if I wouldn't finish up a Bishop!  _La belle Sauvage_--they'd
put it around I'd found my beauty in the backwoods, and converted her.
. . . Well, what d'ye say?  Isn't that a prettier prospect than to end
as Sir Oliver's cast-off?"

She put a hand backwards, and found a gate-rail to steady her.

"Ah! . . . How you dare!" she managed to murmur.

"Dare?  Eh! you're thinking of Sir Oliver?"  He laughed easily.
"Lady Caroline will put _that_ all right.  He'll be furious at first, no
doubt; my fine gentleman thinks himself the lion in the fable--when he
shares out the best for himself, no dog dares bark.  But we'll give him
the go-by, and afterwards he can't squeal without showing himself the
public fool. . . . Squeal?  I hope he will.  I owe him one."

At this moment young George and Increase Cordery came past the far
corner of the house with their team, their harness-chains jingling as
they rode afield.  At sight of them a strong temptation assailed Ruth,
but she thrust it from her.

"Sir"--she steadied her voice--"bethink you, please, that I have only to
lift a hand and those two, with their brothers, will drag you through
the farm pond."

Before he could answer, she called to them.  As they turned and walked
their horses towards her she glanced at Mr. Silk, half mischievously in
spite of her fierce anger.  He was visibly perturbed; but his face,
mottled yellow with terror, suggested loathing rather than laughter.

"I am sorry to trouble you, but will you please fetch Mr. Silk's horse?
He must return at once."

When they were gone she turned to him.

"I am sorry to dismiss you thus, sir, after the--the honour you have
done me; the more sorry because you will never understand."

Indeed--his scare having passed--he was genuinely surprised, indignant.

"I understand this much," he answered coarsely, "that I've offered to
make you an honest woman, but you prefer to be--"  The word was on his
tongue-tip, but hung fire there.

She had turned her back on him, and stood with her arms resting for
support on the upper rail of the gate.  She heard him walk away towards
the stable-yard. . . . By-and-by she heard him ride off--heard the click
of the gate behind him.  A while after this she listened, and then bowed
her face upon her arms.



Chapter XV.


THE CHOOSING.


The minutes passed, and still she leaned there.  At long intervals, when
a sob would not be repressed, her shoulders heaved and fell.  But it was
characteristic of Ruth Josselin throughout her life that she hated to
indulge in distress, even when alone.  As a child she had been stoical;
but since the day of her ordeal in Port Nassau she had not once wept in
self-pity.  She had taught herself to regard all self-pity as shameful.

She made no sound.  The morning heat had increased, and across it the
small morning noises of the farm were borne drowsily--the repeated
strokes of a hatchet in the backyard, where young Lemuel split logs; the
voice of Mrs. Cordery, also in the backyard, calling the poultry for
their meal of Indian corn; the opening and shutting of windows as rooms
were redded and dusted; lastly, Miss Quiney's tentative touch on the
spinet.  Sir Oliver in his lordly way had sent a spinet by cart from
Boston; and Tatty, long since outstripped by her pupil, had a trick of
picking out passages from the more difficult pieces of music and
"sampling" them as she innocently termed it--a few chords now and again,
but melodies for the most part, note by note hesitatingly attempted with
one finger.

For a while these noises fell on Ruth's ear unheeded.  Then something
like a miracle happened.

Of a sudden either the noises ceased or she no longer heard them.
It was as if a hush had descended on the farmstead; a hush of
expectancy.  Still leaning on the gate, she felt it operate within
her--an instantaneous calm at first, soothing away the spirit's anguish
as though it were ointment delicately laid on a bodily wound.  Not an
ache, even, left for reminder! but healing peace at a stroke, and in the
hush of it small thrills awaking, stirring, soft ripples scarcely
perceptible, stealing, hesitating, until overtaken by reinforcements of
bliss and urged in a flood, bathing her soul.

_He_ was near!  He must be here, close at hand!

She lifted her head and gazed around.  For minutes her closed eyeballs
had been pressed down upon her arms, and the sunlight played tricks with
her vision.  Strange hues of scarlet and violet danced on the sky and
around the fringes of the elms.

But he was there!  Yes, beyond all doubting it was he. . . .

He had ridden in through the gateway on his favourite Bayard, and with a
led horse at his side.  He was calling, in that easy masterful voice of
his, for one of the Cordery lads to take the pair to stable.
Lemuel came running.

In the act of dismounting he caught sight of her and paused to lift his
hat.  But before dismissing the horses to stable he looked them over, as
a good master should.

He was coming towards her. . . . Three paces away he halted, and his
smile changed to a frown.

"You are in trouble?"

"It has passed.  I am happy now; and you are welcome, my lord."

She gave him her hand.  He detained it.

"Who has annoyed you?  Those women?"

She shook her head.  "You might make a better guess, for you must have
met him on the way.  Mr. Silk was here a while ago."

"Silk?"

"And he--he asked me to marry him."

"The hound!  But I don't understand.  Silk here?  I see the game; he
must have played escort to those infernal women. . . . Somehow I hadn't
suspected it, and Lady Caroline kept that cat in the bag when I
surprised her at Natchett an hour ago.  I wonder why?"

Ruth had a shrewd guess; but, fearing violence, forbore to tell it.

He went on: "But what puzzles me more is, how I missed meeting him."

In truth the explanation was simple enough.  Mr. Silk, turning the
corner of the lane, where it bent sharply around Farmer Cordery's
wood-stacks, had chanced to spy Sir Oliver on a rise of the road to the
eastward, and had edged aside and taken cover behind the stacks.  He was
now making for Natchett at his best speed.

"A while ago, you say?  How long ago?  The thief cannot have gone far--"
Sir Oliver looked behind him.  Clearly he had a mind to call for his
horse again and to pursue.

But Ruth put out a hand.  "He is not worth my lord's anger."

For a moment he stood undecided, then broke into a laugh.
"Was he riding?"

"He was on horseback, to be more exact."

"Then he'll find it a stony long way back to Boston."  He laughed again.
"You see, I've been worrying myself, off and on, about that trick of
Madcap's--I'll be sworn she came within an ace of crossing her legs that
day.  I'd a mind to ride over and bring you Forester--he's a soberer
horse, and can be trusted at timber.  I'd resolved on it, in short, even
before my brother Harry happened to blurt out the secret of Lady
Caroline's little expedition.  Soon as I heard that, I put George the
groom on Forester, and came in chase. . . . I find her ladyship at
Natchett, and after some straight talking I put George in charge of the
conspirators, with instructions to drive them home.  They chose to say
nothing of Silk, and I didn't guess; so now the rogue must either leg it
back or gall himself on a waggon-horse."

"You worried yourself about me?"

"Certainly.  You don't suppose I want my pupil to break her neck?"

"You do Madcap injustice.  Why, yesterday she jumped--she almost flew--
this very gate on which I am leaning."

"The more reason--" he began, and broke off.  His tone had been light,
but when he spoke again it had grown graver, sincerer.  "It is a fact
that I worried about you, but that is not all the reason why I am here.
The whole truth is more selfish. . . . Ruth, I cannot do without you."

She put up a hand, leaning back against the gate as though giddy.

"But why?" he urged, as she made no other response.  "Is it that you
still doubt me--or yourself, perhaps?"

"Both," she murmured.  "It is not so easy as you pretend."  Bliss had
weakened her for a while, but the weakness was passing.

"Those women have been talking to you.  I can engage, whatever they
said, I gave it back to 'em with interest.  They sail by the next ship.
. . . But what did they say?"

"_They say.  What say they? Let them say_," Ruth quoted, her lips
smiling albeit her eyes were moist.  "Does it matter what they said?"

"No; for I can guess.  However the old harridan put it, you were asked
to give me up; and, after all, everything turns on our answer to that.
I have given you mine.  What of yours?"  He stepped close.  "Ruth, will
you give me up?"

She put out her hands as one groping, sightless, and in pain.

"Ah, you are cruel! . . . You know I cannot."




BOOK III.




THE BRIDALS.




Chapter I.



BETROTHED.


Sir Oliver rode back to Boston that same evening.  Ruth had stipulated
that his promise to her folk in the beach cottage still held good; that
when the three years were out, and not a day before, she would return to
them and make her announcement.  Meanwhile, although the coast would
soon be clear of her enemies and he desired to have her near, she begged
off returning to Sabines.  Here at Sweetwater Farm she could ride, with
the large air about her and freedom to think.  It was not that she
shirked books and tutors.  She would turn to them again, by-and-by.
But at Sweetwater she could think things out, and she had great need of
thinking.

He yielded.  He was passionately in love and could deny her nothing.
He would ride over and pay his respects once a week.

So he took his leave, and Ruth abode with the Corderys and Miss Quiney.
Disloyal though she felt it, she caught herself wishing, more than once,
that her lord could have taken dear Tatty back with him to Boston.

I desire to depict Ruth Josselin here as the woman she was, not as an
angel.

Now Tatty, when Sir Oliver had led Ruth indoors and presented her as his
affianced wife, had been taken aback; not scandalised, but decidedly--
and, for so slight a creature, heavily--taken aback.  It is undoubted
that she loved Ruth dearly; nay, so dearly that in a general way no
fortune was too high to befall her darling.  What dreams she had
entertained for her I cannot tell.  Very likely they had been at once
splendid and vague.  Miss Quiney was not worldly-wise, yet her wisdom
did not transcend what little she knew of the world.  She had great
notions of Family, for example.  She had imagined, may be--still in a
vague way--that Sir Oliver would some day provide his _protegee_ with a
mate of good, or at least sufficient, Colonial birth.  She had been
outraged by Lady Caroline's suggestions.  Now this, while it
triumphantly refuted them, did seem to show that Lady Caroline had not
altogether lacked ground for suspicion.

In fine, the dear creature received a shock, and in her flurry could not
dissemble it.

Sir Oliver did not perceive this.  In the first flush of conquest all
men are a trifle fatuous, unobservant.  No woman is.  Miss Quiney's arms
did not suddenly go out to Ruth.  Ruth noted it.  She was just: she
understood.  But (I repeat) she was a woman, and women remember
indelibly whatever small thing happens at this crisis of their lives.

In the end Miss Quiney stretched forth her arms; but at first she seemed
to shrivel and grow very small in her chair.  Nor can her first comment
be called adequate,--

"Dear sir--oh, but excuse me!--this is so sudden!"

Later, when she and Ruth were left alone, she explained, still a little
tremulously, "You took me all of a heap, my dear!  I can hardly realise
it, even now. . . . Such a splendid position!  You will go to London,
I doubt not; and be presented at Court; and be called Lady Vyell. . . .
Have you thought of the responsibilities?"

She had, and she had not.  Her own promised splendours, the command of
wealth and of a great household--this aspect of the future was blank to
her as yet.  But another presented itself and frightened her: it engaged
her conscience in doubts even when she shook it free of fears.
The Family--that mysterious shadow of which Lady Caroline no doubt
showed as the ugliest projection!  Ruth was conscientious.  She divined
that behind Lady Caroline's aggressiveness the shadow held something
truly sacred and worth guarding; something impalpable and yet immensely
solid; something not to be defied or laughed away because inexplicable,
but venerable precisely because it could not be explained; something not
fashioned hastily upon reason, but built by slow accretion, with the
years for its builders--mortared by sentiments, memories, traditions,
decencies, trivialities good and bad, even (may be) by the blood of
foolish quarrels--but founded and welded more firmly, massed more
formidably, than any structure of mere reason; and withal a temple
wherein she, however chastely, might never serve without profaning it.

I do most eagerly desire you, at this point in her story, to be just to
Ruth Josselin.  I wish you to remember what she had suffered, in the
streets, at the hands of self-righteous folk; to understand that it had
killed all religion in her, with all belief in its rites, but not the
essential goodness of her soul.

She at any rate, and according to the light given her, was incurably
just.  Weighing on the one hand her love and Oliver Vyell's, on the
other the half-guessed injury their marriage might do to him and to
others of his race; weighing them not hastily but through long hours of
thought: carrying her doubts off to the hills and there considering them
in solitude, under the open sky; casting out from the problem all of
self save only her exceeding love; this strange girl--made strange by
man's cruelty--decided to give herself in due time, but to exact no
marriage.

Why should she?  The blessing of a clergyman meant nothing to her, as
she was sure it meant nothing to her lover.  Why should she tie him a
day beyond the endurance of his love?  Beyond the death of the thing
itself what sanctity could live in its husk?  And, moreover, in any
event was she not his slave?

So she reasoned: and let the reader call her reasoning by any name he
will.  By some standards it was wicked; by others wrong.  It forgot one
of the strongest arguments against itself, as she was in time to prove.
But let none call her unchaste.


After certain weeks she brought her arguments to him; standing before
him, halting in her speech a little, but entreating him with eyes as
straight as they were modest.  Her very childishness appealed against
her arguments.

He listened, marvelled, and broke into joyous laughter.  He would have
none of it.  Why, she was fit to be a queen!--a thousand times too good
for him. His family?  Their prejudices should fall down before her and
worship.  As little as she did he set store by rites of the Church or
believe in them: but, as the world went, to neglect them would be to
stint her of the chief honour.  Was this fair to him, who desired to
heap honours upon her and would stretch for them even beyond his power?

His passion, rather than his arguments, overbore her.  That passion
rejuvenated him.  Once or twice it choked his voice, and her heart
leapt; for she was a sensible girl and, remembering the dead Margaret
Dance, had schooled herself to know that what was first love with her,
drenching her heart with ecstasy, could never be first love with him.
Yet now and again the miracle declared itself and instead of a lord,
commanding her, he stood before her a boy: and with a boy's halting
speech--ah, so much dearer than eloquence!

Beyond a doubt he was over head and ears in love.  He was honest, too,
in his desire to set her high and make a queen of her.  In Boston, Mr.
Ned Manley, architect of genius, was sitting up into the small hours of
morning; now, between potations of brandy, cursing Sir Oliver for a
slave-driver, while Batty Langton looked on and criticised with a smile
that tolerated a world of fools for the sake of one or two inspired
ones; anon working like a demon and boasting while he worked.
Already on a hillside between Boston and Sweetwater Farm--the hill
itself could be seen from the farmstead, but not their operations, which
lay on the far side--three hundred labourers were toiling in gangs,
levelling, terracing, hewing down forest trees, laying foundations.
Already ships were heading for Boston Harbour with statuary and wrought
marble in their holds, all to beautify a palace meet for Oliver Vyell's
bride.  Thus love wrought in him, in a not extraordinary way if we allow
for his extraordinary means.  He and Ruth, between them, were beginning
to sing the eternal duet of courtship:--

_He_.--Since that I love, this world has grown;
Yea, widens all to be possest.
_She_--Since that I love, it narrows down
Into one little nest.

_He_.--Since that I love, I rage and burn
O'erwhelming Nineveh with Rome!
_She_.--In vain! in vain! Fond man return--
Such doings be at home!

He had reached an age to know himself in his own despite.  He was no
boy, to dream of building or overthrowing empires.  But he could build
his love a palace.  His friend Batty Langton bore with all this energy
and smiled wisely.

Ruth guessed nothing of these preparations.  But his vehemence broke
down her scruples, overbore and swept away what she had built in hours
of patient thinking.  She yielded: she would be married, since he willed
it.

But the debate had been; and it left Tatty, with her maxims and
taken-for-granted practicalities, hard to endure at times.

"The outfit?" Tatty would suggest.  "At this distance from civilisation
we cannot even begin to take it in hand.  Yet it should be worthy of the
occasion, and men--speaking with all respect of Sir Oliver--are apt to
overlook these things.  Dear Ruth, I do not know if you have thought of
returning to Sabines. . . . So much handier. . . ."


Ruth, half-wilfully, refused to think of returning to Sabines.

But if Tatty fussed, the Cordery lads made more than recompense for her
fussing.  From the hour when, at supper-time, Sir Oliver led Miss
Josselin into the kitchen, his bride affianced, all discord ceased
between these young men.  He was their master and patron, and they
thenceforth were her servants only--her equal champions should
occasion ever be given.

Thenceforth too, and until the hour when at nightfall she drove away
from Sweetwater Farm, she was their goddess: and as, while Phoebus
served shepherd to Admetus, his fellow swains noted that never had
harvest been so heavy or life so full of sweet and healthy rivalries, so
these young men, who but once or twice saw Ruth Josselin after the hour
of her departure, talked in scattered homesteads all their days of that
good time at Sweetwater, and of the season's wonderful bearings.
Undoubtedly the winter was a genial one--so genial that scarcely a day
denied Ruth a bracing ride: the spring that followed seemed to rain and
shine almost in obedience to Farmer Cordery's evening prayer (and it
never left the Almighty in doubt of his exact wishes).  Summer came, and
the young men, emulous but no longer bickering, scythed down prodigious
swathes; harvest-fall, and they put in their sickles among tall stalk
and full ear.

Sir Oliver and Ruth watched the harvest.  When all was gathered, the
young men begged that she would ride home on the last load.
They escorted her back to the farmstead, walking two-by-two before the
cart, under the young moon.

Next evening at the same hour she bade them farewell and climbed into a
light waggon that stood ready, its lamps throwing long shafts of light.
Horses had been sent on ahead, with two servants for escort, and would
await her at dawn, far on the road; but to-night she would sleep in the
waggon, upon a scented bed of hay.  The reason for this belated start
Sir Oliver kept a secret from her.  There was a certain hill upon the
way, and he would not have her pass it by daylight.  He had returned
that morning to Boston; Miss Quiney with him.

Ruth's eyes were moist to leave these good folk.  Farmer Cordery cleared
his throat and blessed her in parting.  She blessed them in return.

The waggon, after following the Boston road for a while, turned
northward, bearing her by strange ways and through the night towards
Port Nassau.



Chapter II.


THE RETURN.


The breakers boomed up the beach, and in the blown spray Old Josselin
pottered, bareheaded and barefoot.  His eyesight had grown dimmer, but
otherwise his bodily health had improved, for nowadays he ate food
enough: and, as for purblindness, why there was no real need to keep
watch on the sea.  He did it from habit.

Ruth came on him much as Sir Oliver had come on him three years before;
the roar of the breakers swallowing all sound of Madcap's hoofs until
she was close at his shoulder.  Now as then he turned about with a
puzzled face, peered, and lifted his hand a little way as if to touch
his forehead.

"Your ladyship--" he mumbled, noting only her fine clothes.

"Grandfather!"

She slipped down from saddle and kissed him, in sight of the grooms, who
had reined up fifty yards away.

"What?  Ruth, is it? . . . Here's news, now, for your mother, poor
soul!"

"How is she?  Take me to her at once, please."

"Eh! . . . Your mother keeps well enough; though doited, o' course--
doited.  Properly grown you be, too, I must say. . . . I didn't
reckernise ye comin' on me like that.  Inches ye've grown."

"And you--well, you look just the same as ever; only fuller and haler."