them, and stooping down for pots and pans, when I looked at her too
ruddily--all these things came upon me so, without any legal notice,
that I could only look at Ruth, and think how very good she was, and how
bright her handles were; and wonder if I had wronged her. Once or twice,
I began--this I say upon my honour--to endeavour to explain exactly, how
we were at Plover's Barrows; how we all had been bound to fight, and had
defeated the enemy, keeping their queen amongst us. But Ruth would
make some great mistake between Lorna and Gwenny Carfax, and gave me no
chance to set her aright, and cared about nothing much, except some news
of Sally Snowe.

What could I do with this little thing? All my sense of modesty, and
value for my dinner, were against my over-pressing all the graceful
hints I had given about Lorna. Ruth was just a girl of that sort, who
will not believe one word, except from her own seeing; not so much
from any doubt, as from the practice of using eyes which have been in
business.

I asked Cousin Ruth (as we used to call her, though the cousinship was
distant) what was become of Uncle Ben, and how it was that we never
heard anything of or from him now. She replied that she hardly knew
what to make of her grandfather's manner of carrying on, for the last
half-year or more. He was apt to leave his home, she said, at any hour
of the day or night; going none knew whither, and returning no one
might say when. And his dress, in her opinion, was enough to frighten
a hodman, of a scavenger of the roads, instead of the decent suit
of kersey, or of Sabbath doeskins, such as had won the respect and
reverence of his fellow-townsmen. But the worst of all things was, as
she confessed with tears in her eyes, that the poor old gentleman had
something weighing heavily on his mind.

"It will shorten his days, Cousin Ridd," she said, for she never would
call me Cousin John; "he has no enjoyment of anything that he eats or
drinks, nor even in counting his money, as he used to do all Sunday;
indeed no pleasure in anything, unless it be smoking his pipe, and
thinking and staring at bits of brown stone, which he pulls, every now
and then, out of his pockets. And the business he used to take such
pride in is now left almost entirely to the foreman, and to me."

"And what will become of you, dear Ruth, if anything happens to the old
man?"

"I am sure I know not," she answered simply; "and I cannot bear to think
of it. It