“Mr. Farquhar!  Why, they do say he’s thinking of Miss Jemima!”

“Nonsense, Sally! why, he’s old enough to be her father!” said Miss Benson, halfway up the first flight.

“There’s no need for it to be called nonsense, though he may be ten year older,” muttered Sally, retreating towards the kitchen.  “Bradshaw’s Betsy knows what she’s about, and wouldn’t have said it for nothing.”

Ruth wondered a little about it.  She loved Jemima well enough to be interested in what related to her; but, after thinking for a few minutes, she decided that such a marriage was, and would ever be, very unlikely.

CHAPTER XVIII

RUTH BECOMES A GOVERNESS IN MR. BRADSHAW’S FAMILY

One afternoon, not long after this, Mr. and Miss Benson set off to call upon a farmer, who attended the chapel, but lived at some distance from the town.  They intended to stay to tea if they were invited, and Ruth and Sally were left to spend a long afternoon together.  At first, Sally was busy in her kitchen, and Ruth employed herself in carrying her baby out into the garden.  It was now nearly a year since she came to the Bensons’; it seemed like yesterday, and yet as if a lifetime had gone between.  The flowers were budding now, that were all in bloom when she came down, on the first autumnal morning, into the sunny parlour.  The yellow jessamine that was then a tender plant, had now taken firm root in the soil, and was sending out strong shoots; the wall-flowers, which Miss Benson had sown on the wall a day or two after her arrival, were scenting the air with their fragrant flowers.  Ruth knew every plant now; it seemed as though she had always lived here, and always known the inhabitants of the house.  She heard Sally singing her accustomed song in the kitchen, a song she never varied, over her afternoon’s work.  It began—­

“As I was going to Derby, sir, Upon a market-day.”

And, if music is a necessary element in a song, perhaps I had better call it by some other name.

But the strange change was in Ruth herself.  She was conscious of it, though she could not define it, and did not dwell upon it.  Life had become significant and full of duty to her.  She delighted in the exercise of her intellectual powers, and liked the idea of the infinite amount of which she was ignorant; for it was a grand pleasure to learn,—­to crave, and be satisfied.  She strove to forget what had gone before this last twelve months.  She shuddered up from contemplating it; it was like a bad, unholy dream.  And yet, there was a strange yearning kind of love for the father of the child whom she pressed to her heart, which came, and she could not bid it begone as sinful, it was so pure and natural, even when thinking of it as in the sight of God.  Little Leonard cooed to the flowers, and stretched after their bright colours; and Ruth laid him on the dry turf, and pelted him with the gay petals.