Chapter IX

“How do you do this morning, Ruth?” said the old lady, lowering herself gradually into a softly-cushioned arm chair. “How your sickness has altered you! You look like a ghost? I shouldn’t wonder if you lost all your hair; it is no uncommon thing in sickness; or your teeth either. How’s the baby? She don’t favor our side of the house at all. She is quite a plain child, in fact. Has she any symptoms, yet, of a sore mouth? I hope not, because she will communicate it to your breast, and then you’ll have a time of it. I knew a poor, feeble thing once, who died of it. Of course, you intend, when Mrs. Jiff leaves, to take care of the baby yourself; a nursery girl would be very expensive.”

“I believe Harry has already engaged one,” said Ruth.

“I don’t think he has,” said the old lady, sitting up very straight, “because it was only this morning that the doctor and I figured up the expense it would be to you, and we unanimously came to the conclusion to tell Harry that you’d better take care of the child yourself. I always took care of my babies. You oughtn’t to have mentioned a nursery girl, at all, to Harry.”

“He proposed it himself,” replied Ruth; “he said I was too feeble to have the care of the child.”

“Pooh! pshaw! stuff! no such thing. You are well enough, or will be, before long. Now, there’s a girl’s board to begin with. Servant girls eat like boa-constrictors. Then, there’s the soap and oil she’ll waste;—oh, the thing isn’t to be thought of; it is perfectly ruinous. If you hadn’t made a fool of Harry, he never could have dreamed of it. You ought to have sense enough to check him, when he would go into such extravagances for you, but some people haven’t any sense. Where would all the sugar, and starch, and soap, go to, I’d like to know, if we were to have a second girl in the house? How long would the wood-pile, or pitch-kindlings, or our new copper-boiler last? And who is to keep the back gate bolted, with such a chit flying in and out?”

“Will you please hand me that camphor bottle?” said Ruth, laying her hand upon her throbbing forehead.

“How’s my little snow-drop to-day?” said Harry, entering Ruth’s room as his mother swept out; “what ails your eyes, Ruth?” said her husband, removing the little hands which hid them.

“A sudden pain,” said Ruth, laughing gaily; “it has gone now; the camphor was too strong.”

Good Ruth! brave Ruth! Was Harry deceived? Something ails his eyes, now; but Ruth has too much tact to notice it.

Oh Love! thou skilful teacher! learned beyond all the wisdom of the schools.