ut that?"

The doctor frowned:

"It isn't that fat chump of a Wainwright, is it? Because if it is I
shan't lift my finger to help you go."

But Ruth's laugh rang out clear and free.

"Never! dear friend, never! Set your mind at rest about him," she
finished, sobering down. "And if I care for someone, Daddy-Doctor, can't
you trust me I'd pick out someone who was all right?"

"I suppose so!" grumbled the doctor only half satisfied, "but girls are
so dreadfully blind."

"I think you'd like him," she hazarded, her cheeks growing pinker, "that
is, you would if there _is_ anybody," she corrected herself laughing.
"But you see, it's a secret yet and maybe always will be. I'm not sure
that he knows, and I'm not quite sure I know myself----"

"Oh, I see!" said the doctor watching her sweet face with a tender
jealousy in his eyes. "Well, I suppose I'll help you to go, but I'll
shoot him, remember, if he doesn't turn out to be all right. It would
take a mighty superior person to be good enough for you, little girl."

"That's just what he is," said Ruth sweetly, and then rising and stooping
over him she dropped a kiss on the wavy silver lock of hair that hung
over the doctor's forehead.

"Thank you, Daddy-Doctor! I knew you would," she said happily. "And
please don't be too long about it. I'm in a great hurry."

The doctor promised, of course. No one could resist Ruth when she was
like that, and in due time certain forces were set in operation to the
end that she might have her desire.

Meanwhile, as she waited, Ruth filled her days with thoughts of others,
not forgetting Cameron's mother for whom she was always preparing some
little surprise, a dainty gift, some fruit or flowers, a book that she
thought might comfort and while away her loneliness, a restful ride at
the early evening, all the little things that a thoughtful daughter might
do for a mother. And Cameron's mother wrote him long letters about it all
which would have delighted his heart during those dreary days if they
could only have reached him then.

Ruth's letters to Cameron were full of the things she was doing, full of
her sweet wise thoughts that seemed to be growing wiser every day. She
had taken pictures of her Italian friends and introduced him to them one
by one. She had filled every page with little word pictures of her daily
life. It seemed a pity that he could not have had them just when he
needed them most. It would have filled her with disma