“Thee has another letter from young Sterling,” said Eli Bolton.
“Yes. Philip has gone to the far west.”
“How far?”
“He doesn’t say, but it’s on the frontier, and on the map everything
beyond it is marked ‘Indians’ and ‘desert,’ and looks as desolate as a
Wednesday Meeting.”
“Humph. It was time for him to do something. Is he going to start a
daily newspaper among the Kick-a-poos?”
“Father, thee’s unjust to Philip. He’s going into business.”
“What sort of business can a young man go into without capital?”
“He doesn’t say exactly what it is,” said Ruth a little dubiously, “but
it’s something about land and railroads, and thee knows, father, that
fortunes are made nobody knows exactly how, in a new country.”
“I should think so, you innocent puss, and in an old one too. But Philip
is honest, and he has talent enough, if he will stop scribbling, to make
his way. But thee may as well take care of theeself, Ruth, and not go
dawdling along with a young man in his adventures, until thy own mind is
a little more settled what thee wants.”
This excellent advice did not seem to impress Ruth greatly, for she was
looking away with that abstraction of vision which often came into her
grey eyes, and at length she exclaimed, with a sort of impatience,
“I wish I could go west, or south, or somewhere. What a box women are
put into, measured for it, and put in young; if we go anywhere it’s in a
box, veiled and pinioned and shut in by disabilities. Father, I should
like to break things and get loose!”
What a sweet-voiced little innocent, it was to be sure.
“Thee will no doubt break things enough when thy time comes, child; women
always have; but what does thee want now that thee hasn’t?”
“I want to be something, to make myself something, to do something. Why
should I rust, and be stupid, and sit in inaction because I am a girl?
What would happen to me if thee should lose thy property and die? What
one useful thing could I do for a living, for the support of mother and
the children? And if I had a fortune, would thee want me to lead a
useless life?”
“Has thy mother led a useless life?”
“Somewhat that depends upon whether her children amount to anything,”
retorted the sharp little disputant. “What’s the good, father, of a
series of human beings who don’t advance any?”
Friend Eli, who had long ago laid aside the Quaker dress, and was out of
Meeting, and who in fact after a youth of doubt could not yet define his
belief, nevertheless looked with some wonder at this fierce young eagle
of his, hatched in a Friend’s dove-cote. But he only said,
“Has thee consulted thy mother about a career, I suppose it is a career
thee wants?”
Ruth did not reply directly; she complained that her mother didn’t
understand her. But that wise and placid woman understood the sweet
rebel a great deal better than Ruth understood herself. She also had a
history, possibly, and had sometime beaten her young wings against the
cage of custom, and indulged in dreams of a new social order, and had
passed through that fiery period when it seems possible for one mind,
which has not yet tried its limits, to break up and re-arrange the world.
Ruth replied to Philip’s letter in due time and in the most cordial and
unsentimental manner. Philip liked the letter, as he did everything she
did; but he had a dim notion that there was more about herself in the
letter than about him. He took it with him from the Southern Hotel, when
he went to walk, and read it over and again in an unfrequented street as
he stumbled along. The rather common-place and unformed hand-writing
seemed to him peculiar and characteristic, different from that of any
other woman.
Ruth was glad to hear that Philip had made a push into the world, and she
was sure that his talent and courage would make a way for him. She
should pray for his success at any rate, and especially that the Indians,