Aunt Rachel / A Rustic Sentimental Comedy

tion of the old lady's displeasure, and found none. Why should she desire to insult him? In what possible way could he have offended her? Even a lover (ingenious as lovers always

it was unpleasant to know that there was an enemy in the camp which he had always thought entirely

ed his courage to the sticking-point. Being once there it held until the need for it was over; but when the letter was written it would have followed its forerunners if there had but been another sheet of paper in the house or the day had been anything but Sunday. As it was, he let it stand perforce, enveloped and addressed it in a sort of desperation, and put it in his pocket ready for personal delivery. The quartette party always met on Sunday afternoons and played sacred music. Not so long ago they had been used to meet in church; but since the introduction of gas to the venerable building the afternoon service had been abandoned and an evening service instituted in its stead. The music-parties were held at Fuller's in the summer-time, and Reuben's chance of a declaration by letter looked simple and easy enough. It was but to slip the all-important note into Ruth's hand with a petition to her to rea

ning sense of shyness to prevent him from walking past his host with the merest salutation and fulfilling his own purpose then and there. But the trouble was that to his own disturbed feeling Fuller would infallibly have guessed his purpose, and either of the other members of the quartette arrivin

e elder, singling one volume from the pile. "It's th

f near it, began to arrange the music. Reuben still stood awkwardly fingering the leaves of Manzini's duets, when Ruth appeared at the house door. He had made but a step towards her, and had not even made a step in his mind towards reading the half-shy, half-appealing aspect she wore, when the prim figure of Aunt Rachel appeared from behind her, and the old woman, with defiance expressed in every line and gesture, laid he

the front board of the binding and the first blank leaf. It would be strange if he could not find time to whisper, "Look in Manzini" before the day was over; and even if that course should fail he could at least forward his lette

so much as cast a glance in his direction. By-and-by the two Elds appeared, and the customary business of the afternoon began. Reuben had much ado to pin himself down to the music, but he succeeded fairly well, and gave nobody reason to suppose that his mind wandered far and often from his task. It was well for his repute for sanity, especially after the wild leadership at morning service, that he was famil

ersons of Mrs. Sennacherib and Mrs. Isaiah, who arrived w

r, "Ruth's got a bit of a tay-party this afterno

le distance from the table, and Ruth and the two new arrivals were in the act of entering the house. Reuben obeyed the impulse which moved him, and rising from his place crossed over to where the little old lady

and the two new arrivals, walking with an air of exaggerated dignity. Reuben, returning to his seat, had to make great play with his pocket-handkerchief to cove

r this that he excited something like c

he lad, 'Saiah,"

s, Reuben, bisent?" sai

etfully. "Let us try again. No. There's nothing t

grace, although at one time Ruth's sympathetic, shy look almost broke him down, and at another, Rachel

ir absence he got on better, but it was almost as great a relief as he had ever known to find that the con

the afternoon sunlight with one hand. Rachel surveyed the quartette party from

series of flutterings after it. He controlled himself as well as he might, and with a single g

aking room for her guests to pass. "Would she give him a chance for a word? The girl saw the unconscious pleading in his eyes, and blushing, looked on the ground. But she kept her place, and Reuben comin

zini. The duets. The b

ky passage, thankful for the gloom, for he felt that he was blushing like a boy. Ruth had made a guilty start forward into the garden, and did not pause until she had reached the table. "I beg your p

anybody watching her? In every nerve she felt the eyes of all the party in the sitting-room as if they actually pierced and burned her. But standing with bent head, with an attitude of reverie which she felt to be unspeakably guilty, she raised the board with an air of chance, a semblance of no interest touching her features-as though that could influence anybody, since her face was hidden-and saw a letter with her name upon it. To lay one hand upon this, and to sl

s solemn as a graven image, and returned wry answers to the talk of those about him. There was no calling back his declaration now, and he felt it to be clumsy beyond expression, and inadequate alike to his sense of Ruth's

y of her own heart. She had always thought Reuben, even when she was a school-girl, the handsomest and manliest and cleverest of men. If it were unmaidenly to have thought so, and to allow her heart to be captured by a man who had never spoken a word of open love to her, she must be called unmaidenly

her, she left the room, ostensibly to assist in clearing away the tea-things, and was no sooner out of sight than she skimmed like a swallow to her own chamber and there read Reuben's letter. When she came back again Reuben knew that she had read it, and knew, too, that she had read i

se and clasp her in his arms and claim her for his own before them all. Aunt Rachel looked at him once or twice also, as if she stabbed him with

g that he should be punished for it richly, as he deserved. She had exposed the character of the Golds to her niece, and had told her that they were wicked and bad and shameless-male jilts, whose one delight it was to break feminine hearts. Ruth would certainly believe what she

ain have made opportunity to be near her, but Rachel was unwinking in her watchfulness, and he was compelled to surrender his design. The bells began to ring for evening church, and Ruth and the womenfolk went up-stairs to make ready for out-of-doors. The quartette par

e of some curious intuition of Ruth's neighborhood to him. She was walking towards him at that moment, her footsteps falling soundlessly on the greensward, her face blushing and her eyes downcast. As sh

ng. But the small dragon still guarded his Hesperides, and on the way to church he escorted Mrs. Isaiah, a matron gaunt and stern, whose cheerful doctrine it was that any spoken word not made actually necessary by the bu

paused to shake hands with

; but to Reuben's ears there was a meaning in it, and his eyes answered to the meaning with such a flash of

eyes flashed fro

hen Reuben and his confrere had entered on the cavernous darkness of the winding stairway. "I

h Ruth rejoiced, but at the secon

e it would be early enough to begin it when she had her father definitely on her side, as she would have to-morrow. So she went into

king straight to the table at which the quartette party had sat playing an hour or two earlier, laid hands upon Manzini's volume of duets for the violin. She took it by the back of the cover and gave it a shake, and out from

rimmest and most fashionable accent. "

ing at her could have supposed that she had been guilty of such an act; for if ever conscious rectitude and high resolve for good s

I know, the very book! You shall not suffer as I have suffered, my

ch again. She succeeded in getting Ruth away without a sight of Reuben, but the young man passed them on their way with a step still quicker than he had used that morning. He threw a g

he reached his own room he was breathless, but he struck a light, drew down the blinds, and turned over the leaves of the music-book one by one. In the centre of the book he paused, for there he seemed to find the object of his search. A note, bearing for sole superscr

per cracked across as he opened it. It began "D

ch a matter. But I have consulted my own heart, and have laid it before the Throne, knowing no earthly adviser. Dear Mr. G

h should have written it; but though he searched the book from c