iness for poor Larry or that her
peace of mind was more or less purchased at cost of his.

Larry kept the promise he had made to his uncle more literally than the
latter had had any idea he would or could. He never sought out Ruth's
society, was never alone with her if he could help it, never so much as
touched her hand. Ruth being a very human and feminine little person
sometimes wished he were not quite so consistently, "Holidayish" in his
conduct. She missed the ardent gaze of those wonderful gray eyes which he
now kept studiously averted from hers. Privately she thought it would not
have mattered so fearfully if just once in a while he had forgotten the
ring. Life was very, very drab when you never forgot and let yourself go
the tiniest little bit. Child like little Ruth never guessed that a man
like Larry Holiday does not dare let himself go the tiniest little bit,
lest he go farther, far enough to regret.

Doctor Holiday watching in silence out of the tail of his eye understood
better what was going on behind his nephew's quiet exterior demeanor,
and wondered sometimes if it had not been a mistake to keep the boy
bound to the wheel like that, if he should not rather have packed him
off to the uttermost parts of the earth, far away from the little lady
with the wedding ring who was so little married. And yet there was
Granny, growing perceptibly weaker day by day, clinging pathetically to
Larry's young strength. Poor Granny! And poor Larry! How little one
could do for either!

Ruth's memory did not return. She remembered, or at least found familiar,
books she had read, songs she must have sung, drifted into doing a
hundred little simple everyday things she must have done before, since
they came to her with no effort. She could sew and knit and play the
piano exquisitely. But all this seemed rather a trick of the fingers than
of the mind. The people, the places, the life that lay behind that crash
on the Overland never returned to her consciousness for all her anxious
struggle to get them back.

It began to look as if her husband, if she had one, were not going to
claim her. No one claimed her. Not a single response came from all the
extensive advertising which Larry still kept up in vain hope of success.
Apparently no one had missed the little Goldilocks. Precious as she was
none sought her.

In the meanwhile she was an undisguised angel visitant to the House on
the Hill. If in his kindly hospitality Doctor Ho