It was with a little smile that she looked up at Ellen, who was anxiously waiting for her answer, and said, “I’ll go down, of course; I should be a selfish pig not to when you are all so good to me.”

“That’s a darlin,” cried Ellen much relieved.  “And would you please try to make him feel that it’s a great favor to you for him to come down?  You know the men have to be managed a bit,” she added slyly.

Ruth made a hasty dinner toilet by running a comb through her waving locks, patting the big bow at the back of her head, and putting on a fresh collar.  Then she went slowly downstairs, wishing she knew just what to say to Arthur.

To her relief he looked up from the paper he was reading and said just as if they had been meeting every day for the past two weeks, “I’m sure this report makes it seem worse than it is, Ruth.  I don’t believe there is any real reason for you to worry about your father.”

“Do you really think so?  I suppose it’s foolish to worry, but it’s pretty hard when he’s so far away and I haven’t heard for so long.”

There was a suspicious quaver in her voice that made Arthur’s thoughts turn longingly to the safe shelter of his own room.  What if he should have a weeping girl on his hands!  He turned cold at the thought.  “Oh, I’m sure you’ll get some word from your father before morning,” he said with such anxious haste that quick-witted Ruth guessed at once what he was dreading.

“You think I’m going to cry, but I’m not,” she announced with great dignity.  “I hate to cry before people anyway, and I specially wouldn’t before a boy.”

“Good for you!  I wouldn’t cry before a boy either,” answered Arthur with a twinkle in his eye, and then they both laughed and felt better.

“It was good of you to come down to dinner tonight,” said Ruth as they began on their soup.  “If I’d been alone I shouldn’t have been able to keep my mind off that awful newspaper heading for a minute.”

“We can telephone in town after a while and find out what they know at the steamship company’s office.  I can’t help feeling, though, that the newspaper report is very likely exaggerated.”

Ruth felt much comforted by this masculine view of the situation, and racked her brain to think up some interesting subjects for conversation, for she wanted to show him that girls could be calm and self-possessed even under the most trying circumstances.

“Are you fond of football?” she asked suddenly, when the long silence was getting on her nerves, and she felt that she must say something.  Before he could answer, it flashed across her mind with painful distinctness that it was at football that Arthur had been injured.  The color flashed into her cheeks, and she unconsciously looked so appealingly at Arthur that he came to the rescue at once.

“Of course I am,” he asserted stoutly.  “It’s a great old game, and we’ve got some ripping good players in Glenloch.  You ought to see some of the Saturday games.”