Ruth durst cry no more; it was no relief, now she was watched and noticed, and plied with a sandwich or a ginger-bread each time she looked sad.  She lay back with her eyes shut, as if asleep, and went on, and on, the sun never seeming to move from his high place in the sky, nor the bright hot day to show the least sign of waning.  Every now and then Miss Benson scrambled down, and made kind inquiries of the pale, weary Ruth; and once they changed coaches, and the fat old lady left her with a hearty shake of the hand.

“It is not much further now,” said Miss Benson, apologetically, to Ruth.  “See! we are losing sight of the Welsh mountains.  We have about eighteen miles of plain, and then we come to the moors and the rising ground, amidst which Eccleston lies.  I wish we were there, for my brother is sadly tired.”  The first wonder in Ruth’s mind was, why then, if Mr. Benson was so tired, did they not stop where they were for the night; for she knew little of the expenses of a night at an inn.  The next thought was, to beg that Mr. Benson would take her place inside the coach, and allow her to mount up by Miss Benson.  She proposed this, and Miss Benson was evidently pleased.

“Well, if you’re not tired, it would be a rest and a change for him, to be sure; and if you were by me I could show you the first sight of Eccleston, if we reach there before it is quite dark.”

So Mr. Benson got down, and changed places with Ruth.

She hardly yet understood the numerous small economies which he and his sister had to practise—­the little daily self-denials—­all endured so cheerfully and simply, that they had almost ceased to require an effort, and it had become natural to them to think of others before themselves.  Ruth had not understood that it was for economy that their places had been taken on the outside of the coach, while hers, as an invalid requiring rest, was to be the inside; and that the biscuits which supplied the place of a dinner were, in fact, chosen because the difference in price between the two would go a little way towards fulfilling their plan for receiving her as an inmate.  Her thought about money had been hitherto a child’s thought; the subject had never touched her; but afterwards, when she had lived a little while with the Bensons, her eyes were opened, and she remembered their simple kindness on the journey, and treasured the remembrance of it in her heart.

A low grey cloud was the first sign of Eccleston; it was the smoke of the town hanging over the plain.  Beyond the place where she was expected to believe it existed, arose round, waving uplands; nothing to the fine outlines of the Welsh mountains, but still going up nearer to heaven than the rest of the flat world into which she had now entered.  Rumbling stones, lamp-posts, a sudden stop, and they were in the town of Eccleston; and a strange, uncouth voice, on the dark side of the coach, was heard to say—­

“Be ye there, measter?”