never have. She's got a
heart. More than that, she's got--character."

He paused, thinking, and Cyrus did speak then. "Oh, I don't think I'd
use that word," he said suavely.

"No, you wouldn't; you wouldn't see it, but that's just what I mean." He
turned to the minister. "Character, I say, is what my sister Ruth has
got. Character is something more than putting up a slick front. It's
something more than doing what's expected of you. It's a kind of--a kind
of being faithful to yourself. _Being_ yourself. Oh, I know--" at a
sound from his brother--"just how you can laugh at it, but there's
something to it just the same. Why, Ruth's got more real stuff in her
than you two put together! After being with her these days you, Cy,
strike a fellow as pretty shallow."

That brought the color to his brother's face. Stung to a real retort, he
broke out with considerable heat: "If to have a respect for decency is
'shallow'--!" He quickly checked himself as the door opened and
Harriett's maid entered.

She paused, feeling the tension, startled by their faces. "Excuse me,
sir," she said to the minister, "but Mrs. Tyler said I was to tell you
she had gone out for a few minutes. She said to tell you she had gone to
see her sister."

She looked startled at Ted's laugh. After she had gone he laughed again.
"Hard luck!" he said to his brother-in-law, and walked from the room.

He did not go directly home. He was too upset to face Ruth just then; he
did not want her to know, it would trouble her. And he wanted to
walk--walk as fast as he could, walk off steam, he called it. His heart
was pounding and there seemed too much blood in his head. But he wasn't
sorry, he told himself. Cy would have it in for him now, but what did he
care for that? He could get along without him. But his lips trembled as
he thought that. He had had to get along without his mother; from now on
he would have to get along without his father. He had a moment of
feeling very much alone. And then he thought of Ruth. Yes,--there was
Ruth! He wheeled toward home. He wanted to tell her. He hoped Harriett
hadn't got it told; he wanted to tell her himself. Bless dad! He loved
him for doing that. If only he'd known it in time to let him know what
he thought of him for doing it!

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Harriett had been with Ruth for half an hour and still she had not told
her what she had come to tell her. She was meaning to tell it before she
left, to begin it