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“Oh, very pleasant! but would it do me good?” and Ruth looked up with sudden seriousness in her blue eyes, as a child questions an elder, eager, yet wistful.

“Why not?” asked Randal, wondering at the hesitation.

“I might grow discontented with things here if I saw splendid houses and fine people. I am very happy now, and it would break my heart to lose that happiness, or ever learn to be ashamed of home.”

“But don’t you long for more pleasure, new scenes and other friends than these?” asked the man, touched by the little creature’s loyalty to the things she knew and loved.

“Very often, but mother says when I’m ready they will come, so I wait and try not to be impatient.” But Ruth’s eyes looked out over the green leaves as if the longing was very strong within her to see more of the unknown world lying beyond the mountains that hemmed her in.

“It is natural for birds to hop out of the nest, so I shall expect to see you over there before long, and ask you how you enjoy your first flight,” said Randal, in a paternal tone that had a curious effect on Ruth.

To his surprise, she laughed, then blushed like one of her own roses, and answered with a demure dignity that was very pretty to see.

“I intend to hop soon, but it won’t be a very long flight or very far from mother. She can’t spare me, and nobody in the world can fill her place to me.”

“Bless the child, does she think I’m going to make love to her,” thought Randal, much amused, but quite mistaken. Wiser women had thought so when he assumed the caressing air with which he beguiled them into the little revelations of character he liked to use, as the south wind makes flowers open their hearts to give up their odor, then leaves them to carry it elsewhere, the more welcome for the stolen sweetness.

“Perhaps you are right. The maternal wing is a safe shelter for confiding little souls like you, Miss Ruth. You will be as comfortable here as your flowers in this sunny window,” he said, carelessly pinching geranium leaves, and ruffling the roses till the pink petals of the largest fluttered to the floor.

As if she instinctively felt and resented something in the man which his act symbolized, the girl answered quietly, as she went on with her work, “Yes, if the frost does not touch me, or careless people spoil me too soon.”

Before Randal could reply Aunt Plumy approached like a maternal hen who sees her chicken in danger.

“Saul is goin’ to haul wood after he’s done his chores, mebbe you’d like to go along? The view is good, the roads well broke, and the day uncommon fine.”

“Thanks; it will be delightful, I dare say,” politely responded the lion, with a secret shudder at the idea of a rural promenade at 8 A.M. in the winter.

“Come on, then; we’ll feed the stock, and then I’ll show you how to yoke oxen,” said Saul, with a twinkle in his eye as he led the way, when his new aide had muffled himself up as if for a polar voyage.

“Now, that’s too bad of Saul! He did it on purpose, just to please you, Sophie,” cried Ruth presently, and the girls ran to the window to behold Randal bravely following his host with a pail of pigs’ food in each hand, and an expression of resigned disgust upon his aristocratic face.

“To what base uses may we come,” quoted Emily, as they all nodded and smiled upon the victim as he looked back from the barn-yard, where he was clamorously welcomed by his new charges.

“It is rather a shock at first, but it will do him good, and Saul won’t be too hard upon him, I’m sure,” said Sophie, going back to her work, while Ruth turned her best buds to the sun that they might be ready for a peace-offering to-morrow.