ng had stepped
out of Dr. Davison's chaise to approach her great-uncle's habitation.

At that time Ruth had been less than a mote in the eye of Uncle Jabez.
She was merely an annoyance to the miller at that time. Since then,
however, she had many and many a time proved a blessing to him. Nor did
Jabez Potter refuse to acknowledge this--on occasion.

When Ruth began to do over the interior of the old house, however, Uncle
Jabez protested. The house and mill had been built a hundred and fifty
years before--if not longer ago. It was sacrilege to touch a crooked
rafter or a hammered nail of the entire structure.

But Ruth insisted that she be allowed to make her own rooms under the
roof more comfortable and modern. Ruth had seen old New England
farmhouses rebuilt in the most attractive way one could imagine without
disturbing their ancient exterior appearance. She gathered ideas from
books and magazines, and then went about replanning the entire inside of
the mill farmhouse. But she began the actual rejuvenation of the aspect
of the structure in her own rooms, and had had all the work done since
her return from the war zone the year before.

She now had a bedroom, a sitting room, a dressing room and bathroom up
under the roof, all in white (Helen said "like a hospital"), and when one
opened Ruth's outer door and stepped into her suite it seemed as though
one entered an entirely different house. And if it was a girl who
entered--as Wonota, the Osage princess, did on a certain June day soon
after Jennie Stone's marriage--she could not suppress a cry of delight.

Wonota had stayed before at the Red Mill for a time; but then the workmen
had not completed Ruth's new nest. And although Wonota had been born in a
wigwam on the plains and had spent her childhood in a log cabin with a
turf roof, she could appreciate "pretty things" quite as keenly as any
girl of Ruth's acquaintance.

That was why Ruth--as well as Mr. Hammond of the Alectrion Film
Corporation--believed that the Indian girl would in time become a
successful screen actress. Wonota, though her skin was copper-colored,
liked to dress in up-to-date clothes (and did so) and enjoyed the
refinements of civilization as much as any white girl of her age.

"It is so pretty here, Miss Ruth," she said to her mentor. "May I sleep
in the other bed off your sitting room? It is sweet of you. How foolish
of people wanting to see on the screen how poor Indians live in their
ignor