Chapter IV

“Good morning, Ruth; Mrs. Hall I suppose I should call you, only that I can’t get used to being shoved one side quite so suddenly,” said the old lady, with a faint attempt at a laugh.

“Oh, pray don’t say Mrs. Hall to me” said Ruth, handing her a chair; “call me any name that best pleases you; I shall be quite satisfied.”

“I suppose you feel quite lonesome when Harry is away, attending to business, and as if you hardly knew what to do with yourself; don’t you?”

“Oh, no,” said Ruth, with a glad smile, “not at all, I was just thinking whether I was not glad to have him gone a little while, so that I could sit down and think how much I love him.”

The old lady moved uneasily in her chair. “I suppose you understand all about housekeeping, Ruth?”

Ruth blushed. “No,” said she, “I have but just returned from boarding-school. I asked Harry to wait till I had learned house-keeping matters, but he was not willing.”

The old lady untied her cap-strings, and patted the floor restlessly with her foot.

“It is a great pity you were not brought up properly,” said she. “I learned all that a girl should learn, before I married. Harry has his fortune yet to make, you know. Young people, now-a-days, seem to think that money comes in showers, whenever it is wanted; that’s a mistake; a penny at a time—that’s the way we got ours; that’s the way Harry and you will have to get yours. Harry has been brought up sensibly. He has been taught economy; he is, like me, naturally of a very generous turn; he will occasionally offer you pin-money. In those cases, it will be best for you to pass it over to me to keep; of course you can always have it again, by telling me how you wish to spend it. I would advise you, too, to lay by all your handsome clothes. As to the silk stockings you were married in, of course you will never be so extravagant as to wear them again. I never had a pair of silk stockings in my life; they have a very silly, frivolous look. Do you know how to iron, Ruth?”

“Yes,” said Ruth; “I have sometimes clear-starched my own muslins and laces.”

“Glad to hear it; did you ever seat a pair of pantaloons?”

“No,” said Ruth, repressing a laugh, and yet half inclined to cry; “you forget that I am just home from boarding-school.”

“Can you make bread? When I say bread I mean bread—old fashioned, yeast riz bread; none of your sal-soda, salæratus, sal-volatile poisonous mixtures, that must be eaten as quick as baked, lest it should dry up; yeast bread—do you know how to make it?”

“No,” said Ruth, with a growing sense of her utter good-for-nothingness; “people in the city always buy baker’s bread; my father did.”

“Your father! land’s sake, child, you mustn’t quote your father now you’re married; you haven’t any father.”

I never had, thought Ruth.

“To be sure; what does the Bible say? ‘Forsaking father and mother, cleave to your wife,’ (or husband, which amounts to the same thing, I take it;) and speaking of that, I hope you won’t be always running home, or running anywhere in fact. Wives should be keepers at home. Ruth,” continued the old lady after a short pause, “do you know I should like your looks better, if you didn’t curl your hair?”

“I don’t curl it,” said Ruth, “it curls naturally.”

“That’s a pity,” said the old lady, “you should avoid everything that looks frivolous; you must try and pomatum it down. And Ruth, if you should feel the need of exercise, don’t gad in the streets. Remember there is nothing like a broom and a dust-pan to make the blood circulate.”

“You keep a rag bag, I suppose,” said the old lady; “many’s the glass dish I’ve peddled away my scissors-clippings for. ‘Waste not, want not.’ I’ve got that framed somewhere. I’ll hunt it up, and put it on your wall. It won’t do you any harm to read it now and then.”

“I hope,” continued the old lady, “that you don’t read novels and such trash. I have a very select little library, when you feel inclined to read, consisting of a treatise on ‘The Complaints of Women,’ an excellent sermon on Predestination, by our old minister, Dr. Diggs, and Seven Reasons why John Rogers, the martyr, must have had ten children instead of nine (as is generally supposed); any time that you stand in need of rational reading come to me;” and the old lady, smoothing a wrinkle in her black silk apron, took a dignified leave.