Ruth had been mending stockings, and was just folding up the last pair.  She did not say any more, for she did not want to tease Stephen in her turn; but there was a little quiet smile just under her lips that she kept from pulling too hard at the corners, as she got up and went away with them to her room.

She stopped when she got to the open door of it, with her basket in her hand, and looked in from the threshold at the hanging scroll of Scripture texts printed in large clear letters,—­a sheet for each day of the month,—­and made to fold over and drop behind the black-walnut rod to which they were bound.  It had been given her by her teacher at the Bible Class,—­Mrs. Ingleside; and Ruth loved Mrs. Ingleside very much.

Then she went to her bureau, and put her stockings in their drawer, and set the little basket, with its cotton-ball and darner, and maplewood egg, and small sharp scissors, on the top; and then she went and sat down by the window, in her white considering-chair.

For she had something to think about this morning.

Ruth’s room had three doors.  It was the middle room up stairs, in the beginning of the L. Mrs. Holabird’s opened into it from the front, and just opposite her door another led into the large, light corner room at the end, which Rosamond and Barbara occupied.  Stephen’s was on the other side of the three-feet passage which led straight through from the front staircase to the back of the house.  The front staircase was a broad, low-stepped, old-fashioned one, with a landing half-way up; and it was from this landing that a branch half-flight came into the L, between these two smaller bedrooms.  Now I have begun, I may as well tell you all about it; for, if you are like me, you will be glad to be taken fairly into a house you are to pay a visit in, and find out all the pleasantnesses of it, and whom they especially belong to.

Ruth’s room was longest across the house, and Stephen’s with it; behind his was only the space taken by some closets and the square of staircase beyond.  This staircase had landings also, and was lighted by a window high up in the wall.  Behind Ruth’s, as I have said, was the whole depth of a large apartment.  But as the passage divided the L unequally, it gave the rooms similar space and shape, only at right angles to each other.

The sun came into Stephen’s room in the morning, and into Ruth’s in the afternoon; in the middle of the day the passage was one long shine, from its south window at the end, right through,—­except in such days as these, that were too deep in the summer to bear it, and then the green blinds were shut all around, and the warm wind drew through pleasantly in a soft shade.