Chapter LVIII

“How d’ye do, Ruth?” asked Mr. Ellet, the next morning, as he ran against Ruth in the street; “glad you have taken my advice, and done a sensible thing at last.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” answered Ruth.

“Why, the doctor told me yesterday that you had given Katy up to them, to bring up; you would have done better if you had sent off Nettie too.”

“I have not ‘given Katy up,’” said Ruth, starting and blushing deeply; “and they could not have understood it so; she has only gone on a visit of a fortnight, to recruit a little.”

“Pooh—pooh!” replied Mr. Ellet. “The thing is quietly over with; now don’t make a fuss. The old folks expect to keep her. They wrote to me about it, and I approved of it. It’s the best thing all round; and, as I just said, it would have been better still if Nettie had gone, too. Now don’t make a fool of yourself; you can go once in awhile, I suppose, to see the child.”

“How can I go?” asked Ruth, looking her father calmly in the face; “it costs fifty cents every trip, by railroad, and you know I have not the money.”

“That’s for you to decide,” answered the father coldly; “I can’t be bothered about such trifles. It is the way you always do, Ruth, whenever I see you; but it is time I was at my office. Don’t make a fool of yourself, now; mind what I tell you, and let well alone.”

“Father,” said Ruth; “father—”

“Can’t stop—can’t stop,” said Mr. Ellet, moving rapidly down street, to get out of his daughter’s way.

“Can it be possible,” thought Ruth, looking after him, “that he could connive at such duplicity? Was the old lady’s sympathy a mere stratagem to work upon my feelings? How unnecessarily I reproached myself with my supposed injustice to her? Can good people do such things? Is religion only a fable? No, no; ‘let God be true, and every man a liar.’”