“I hope thee told the elders that father and I are responsible for the piano, and that, much as thee loves music, thee is never in the room when it is played.  Fortunately father is already out of meeting, so they can’t discipline him.  I heard father tell cousin Abner that he was whipped so often for whistling when he was a boy that he was determined to have what compensation he could get now.”

“Thy ways greatly try me, Ruth, and all thy relations.  I desire thy happiness first of all, but thee is starting out on a dangerous path.  Is thy father willing thee should go away to a school of the world’s people?”

“I have not asked him,” Ruth replied with a look that might imply that she was one of those determined little bodies who first made up her own mind and then compelled others to make up theirs in accordance with hers.

“And when thee has got the education thee wants, and lost all relish for the society of thy friends and the ways of thy ancestors, what then?”

Ruth turned square round to her mother, and with an impassive face and not the slightest change of tone, said,

“Mother, I’m going to study medicine?”

Margaret Bolton almost lost for a moment her habitual placidity.

“Thee, study medicine!  A slight frail girl like thee, study medicine!  Does thee think thee could stand it six months?  And the lectures, and the dissecting rooms, has thee thought of the dissecting rooms?”

“Mother,” said Ruth calmly, “I have thought it all over.  I know I can go through the whole, clinics, dissecting room and all.  Does thee think I lack nerve?  What is there to fear in a person dead more than in a person living?”

“But thy health and strength, child; thee can never stand the severe application.  And, besides, suppose thee does learn medicine?”

“I will practice it.”

“Here?”

“Here.”

“Where thee and thy family are known?”

“If I can get patients.”

“I hope at least, Ruth, thee will let us know when thee opens an office,” said her mother, with an approach to sarcasm that she rarely indulged in, as she rose and left the room.

Ruth sat quite still for a tine, with face intent and flushed.  It was out now.  She had begun her open battle.

The sight-seers returned in high spirits from the city.  Was there any building in Greece to compare with Girard College, was there ever such a magnificent pile of stone devised for the shelter of poor orphans?  Think of the stone shingles of the roof eight inches thick!  Ruth asked the enthusiasts if they would like to live in such a sounding mausoleum, with its great halls and echoing rooms, and no comfortable place in it for the accommodation of any body?  If they were orphans, would they like to be brought up in a Grecian temple?

And then there was Broad street!  Wasn’t it the broadest and the longest street in the world?  There certainly was no end to it, and even Ruth was Philadelphian enough to believe that a street ought not to have any end, or architectural point upon which the weary eye could rest.