Read Ruth for Free Online Page B

and months; and, when wearied into going
at last, revenge himself by puzzling the children with the most
ridiculous questions (gravely put) that he could imagine.
    All these boyish tricks annoyed and irritated her far more than the
accounts which reached her of more serious misdoings at college and
in town. Of these grave offences she never spoke; of the smaller
misdeeds she hardly ever ceased speaking.
    Still, at times, she had great influence over him, and nothing
delighted her more than to exercise it. The submission of his will
to hers was sure to be liberally rewarded; for it gave her great
happiness to extort, from his indifference or his affection, the
concessions which she never sought by force of reason, or by appeals
to principle—concessions which he frequently withheld, solely for
the sake of asserting his independence of her control.
    She was anxious for him to marry Miss Duncombe. He cared little or
nothing about it—it was time enough to be married ten years hence;
and so he was dawdling through some months of his life—sometimes
flirting with the nothing-loath Miss Duncombe, sometimes plaguing,
and sometimes delighting his mother, at all times taking care to
please himself—when he first saw Ruth Hilton, and a new, passionate,
hearty feeling shot through his whole being. He did not know why he
was so fascinated by her. She was very beautiful, but he had seen
others equally beautiful, and with many more
agaceries
calculated
to set off the effect of their charms.
    There was, perhaps, something bewitching in the union of the
grace and loveliness of womanhood with the
naïveté
, simplicity,
and innocence of an intelligent child. There was a spell in the
shyness, which made her avoid and shun all admiring approaches to
acquaintance. It would be an exquisite delight to attract and tame
her wildness, just as he had often allured and tamed the timid fawns
in his mother's park.
    By no over-bold admiration, or rash, passionate word, would he
startle her; and, surely, in time she might be induced to look upon
him as a friend, if not something nearer and dearer still.
    In accordance with this determination, he resisted the strong
temptation of walking by her side the whole distance home after
church. He only received the intelligence she brought respecting the
panel with thanks, spoke a few words about the weather, bowed, and
was gone. Ruth believed she should never see him again; and, in spite
of sundry self-upbraidings for her folly, she could not help feeling
as if a shadow were drawn over her existence for several days to
come.
    Mrs Mason was a widow, and had to struggle for the sake of the six or
seven children left dependent on her exertions; thus there was some
reason, and great excuse, for the pinching economy which regulated
her household affairs.
    On Sundays she chose to conclude that all her apprentices had friends
who would be glad to see them to dinner, and give them a welcome
reception for the remainder of the day; while she, and those of
her children who were not at school, went to spend the day at her
father's house, several miles out of the town. Accordingly, no
dinner was cooked on Sundays for the young workwomen; no fires were
lighted in any rooms to which they had access. On this morning they
breakfasted in Mrs Mason's own parlour, after which the room was
closed against them through the day by some understood, though
unspoken prohibition.
    What became of such as Ruth, who had no home and no friends in that
large, populous, desolate town? She had hitherto commissioned the
servant, who went to market on Saturdays for the family, to buy her a
bun or biscuit, whereon she made her fasting dinner in the deserted
workroom, sitting in her walking-dress to keep off the cold, which
clung to her in spite of shawl and bonnet. Then she would sit at
the window, looking out on the dreary prospect till her eyes were
often blinded by tears; and, partly to shake off thoughts and
recollections, the indulgence in