at she had been crying.

"Where's Miss Benson?" said Sally, gruffly.

"Gone out with Mr Benson," answered Ruth, with an absent sadness
in her voice and manner. Her tears, scarce checked while she spoke,
began to fall afresh; and as Sally stood and gazed she saw the babe
look back in his mother's face, and his little lip begin to quiver,
and his open blue eye to grow over-clouded, as with some mysterious
sympathy with the sorrowful face bent over him. Sally took him
briskly from his mother's arms; Ruth looked up in grave surprise, for
in truth she had forgotten Sally's presence, and the suddenness of
the motion startled her.

"My bonny boy! are they letting the salt tears drop on thy sweet face
before thou'rt weaned! Little somebody knows how to be a mother--I
could make a better myself. 'Dance, thumbkin, dance--dance, ye merry
men every one.' Aye, that's it! smile, my pretty. Any one but a child
like thee," continued she, turning to Ruth, "would have known better
than to bring ill-luck on thy babby by letting tears fall on its face
before it was weaned. But thou'rt not fit to have a babby, and so
I've said many a time. I've a great mind to buy thee a doll, and take
thy babby mysel'."

Sally did not look at Ruth, for she was too much engaged in amusing
the baby with the tassel of the string to the window-blind, or else
she would have seen the dignity which the mother's soul put into
Ruth at that moment. Sally was quelled into silence by the gentle
composure, the self-command over her passionate sorrow, which gave to
Ruth an unconscious grandeur of demeanour as she came up to the old
servant.

"Give him back to me, please. I did not know it brought ill-luck, or
if my heart broke I would not have let a tear drop on his face--I
never will again. Thank you, Sally," as the servant relinquished him
to her who came in the name of a mother. Sally watched Ruth's grave,
sweet smile, as she followed up Sally's play with the tassel, and
imitated, with all the docility inspired by love, every movement and
sound which had amused her babe.

"Thou'lt be a mother, after all," said Sally, with a kind of
admiration of the control which Ruth was exercising over herself.
"But why talk of thy heart breaking? I don't question thee about
what's past and gone; but now thou'rt wanting for nothing, nor thy
child either; the time to come is the Lord's, and in His hands; and
yet thou goest about a-sighing and a-moaning in a way that I can't