annoying! We should have had
so much in common, for I hear his taste is quite--well, really quite out
of the way. How contrary things are, Ruth! You awake and me asleep, when
it might just as well have been the other way; but it is Sunday, my
dear, so we must not complain. And now, as we have missed church, I will
lie down again, and you shall read me that nice sermon, which I always
like to hear when I can't go to church; the one in the green book about
Nabob's vineyard."

CHAPTER XV.

Great philosophers and profound metaphysicians should by rights have
lived at Slumberleigh. Those whose lines have fallen to them "ten miles
from a lemon," have time to think, if so inclined.

Only elementary natures complain of their surroundings; and though at
first Ruth had been impatient and depressed, after a time she found
that, better than to live in an atmosphere of thought, was to be thrown
entirely on her own resources, and to do her thinking for herself.

Some minds, of course, sink into inanition if an outward supply of
nutriment is withheld. Others get up and begin to forage for themselves.
Happy are these--when the transition period is over--when, after a time,
the first and worst mistakes have been made and suffered for, and the
only teaching that profits anything at all, the bitter teaching of
experience, has been laid to heart.

Such a nature was Ruth's, upright, self-reliant, without the impetuosity
and impulsiveness that so often accompanies an independent nature, but
accustomed to look at everything through her own eyes, and to think, but
not till now to act for herself.

She had been brought up by her grandmother to believe that before all
things _noblesse oblige_; to despise a dishonorable action, to have her
feelings entirely under control, to be intimate with few, to be
courteous to all. But to help others, to give up anything for them, to
love an unfashionable or middle-class neighbor, or to feel a personal
interest in religion, except as a subject of conversation, had never
found a place in Lady Deyncourt's code, or consequently in Ruth's,
though, as was natural with a generous nature, the girl did many little
kindnesses to those about her, and was personally unselfish, as those
who live with self-centred people are bound to be if there is to be any
semblance of peace in the house.

But now, new thoughts were stirring within her, were leavening her whole
mind. All through these monotonous months