“You, a sick nurse!” said Jemima, involuntarily glancing over the beautiful lithe figure, and the lovely refinement of Ruth’s face as the light of the rising moon fell upon it.  “My dear Ruth, I don’t think you are fitted for it!”

“Don’t you?” said Ruth, a little disappointed.  “I think I am; at least, that I should be very soon.  I like being about sick and helpless people; I always feel so sorry for them; and then I think I have the gift of a very delicate touch, which is such a comfort in many cases.  And I should try to be very watchful and patient.  Mr. Wynne proposed it himself.”

“It was not in that way I meant you were not fitted for it.  I meant that you were fitted for something better.  Why, Ruth, you are better educated than I am!”

“But if nobody will allow me to teach?—­for that is what I suppose you mean.  Besides, I feel as if all my education would be needed to make me a good sick nurse.”

“Your knowledge of Latin, for instance,” said Jemima, hitting, in her vexation at the plan, on the first acquirement of Ruth she could think of.

“Well!” said Ruth, “that won’t come amiss; I can read the prescriptions.”

“Which the doctors would rather you did not do.”

“Still, you can’t say that any knowledge of any kind will be in my way, or will unfit me for my work.”

“Perhaps not.  But all your taste and refinement will be in your way, and will unfit you.”

“You have not thought about this so much as I have, or you would not say so.  Any fastidiousness I shall have to get rid of, and I shall be better without; but any true refinement I am sure I shall find of use; for don’t you think that every power we have may be made to help us in any right work, whatever that is?  Would you not rather be nursed by a person who spoke gently and moved quietly about, than by a loud bustling woman?”

“Yes, to be sure; but a person unfit for anything else may move quietly, and speak gently, and give medicine when the doctor orders it, and keep awake at night; and those are the best qualities I ever heard of in a sick nurse.”  Ruth was quite silent for some time.  At last she said, “At any rate it is work, and as such I am thankful for it.  You cannot discourage me—­and perhaps you know too little of what my life has been—­how set apart in idleness I have been—­to sympathise with me fully.”

“And I wanted you to come to see us—­me in my new home.  Walter and I had planned that we would persuade you to come to us very often” (she had planned, and Mr. Farquhar had consented); “and now you will have to be fastened up in a sick-room.”

“I could not have come,” said Ruth quickly.  “Dear Jemima! it is like you to have thought of it—­but I could not come to your house.  It is not a thing to reason about.  It is just feeling.  But I do feel as if I could not go.  Dear Jemima! if you are ill or sorrowful, and want me, I will come——­”