The yellow and crimson leaves came floating down on the still October air; November followed, bleak and dreary; it was more cheerful when the earth put on her beautiful robe of white, which covered up all the grey naked stems, and loaded the leaves of the hollies and evergreens each with its burden of feathery snow.  When Ruth sat down to languor and sadness, Miss Benson trotted upstairs, and rummaged up every article of spare or worn-out clothing, and bringing down a variety of strange materials, she tried to interest Ruth in making them up into garments for the poor.  But, though Ruth’s fingers flew through the work, she still sighed with thought and remembrance.  Miss Benson was at first disappointed, and then she was angry.  When she heard the low, long sigh, and saw the dreamy eyes filling with glittering tears, she would say, “What is the matter, Ruth?” in a half-reproachful tone, for the sight of suffering was painful to her; she had done all in her power to remedy it; and, though she acknowledged a cause beyond her reach for Ruth’s deep sorrow, and, in fact, loved and respected her all the more for these manifestations of grief, yet at the time they irritated her.  Then Ruth would snatch up the dropped work, and stitch away with drooping eyes, from which the hot tears fell fast; and Miss Benson was then angry with herself, yet not at all inclined to agree with Sally when she asked her mistress “why she kept ‘mithering’ the poor lass with asking her for ever what was the matter, as if she did not know well enough.”  Some element of harmony was wanting—­some little angel of peace, in loving whom all hearts and natures should be drawn together, and their discords hushed.  The earth was still “hiding her guilty front with innocent snow,” when a little baby was laid by the side of the pale, white mother.  It was a boy; beforehand she had wished for a girl, as being less likely to feel the want of a father—­as being what a mother, worse than widowed, could most effectually shelter.  But now she did not think or remember this.  What it was, she would not have exchanged for a wilderness of girls.  It was her own, her darling, her individual baby, already, though not an hour old, separate and sole in her heart, strangely filling up its measure with love and peace, and even hope.  For here was a new, pure, beautiful, innocent life, which she fondly imagined, in that early passion of maternal love, she could guard from every touch of corrupting sin by ever watchful and most tender care.  And her mother had thought the same, most probably; and thousands of others think the same, and pray to God to purify and cleanse their souls, that they may be fit guardians for their little children.  Oh, how Ruth prayed, even while she was yet too weak to speak; and how she felt the beauty and significance of the words, “Our Father!”

She was roused from this holy abstraction by the sound of Miss Benson’s voice.  It was very much as if she had been crying.