EE

Ruth had been with Annie for five days now; the original three days for
which she had said she could come had been lengthened to a week, and she
knew that she would not want to go even then. For here was rest. Here
she could forget about herself as set apart from others. Here she did
not seem apart. After the stress of those days at home it was good to
rest in this simple feeling of being just one with others. It was good
to lie on the grass under the trees, troubled thoughts in abeyance, and
feel spring in the earth, take it in by smell and sound. It was
wonderfully good to play with the children, to lie on the grass and let
the little two year old girl--Annie's baby--pull at her hair, toddling
around her, cooing and crowing. There was healing in that. It was good
to be some place where she did not seem to cause embarrassment, to be
where she was wanted. After the strain of recent events the simple
things of these days were very sweet to her. It had become monstrous
always to have to feel that something about her made her different from
other people. There was something terrible in it--something not good for
one. Here was release from that.

And it was good to be with Annie; they had not talked much yet--not
seriously talked. Annie seemed to know that it was rest in little things
Ruth needed now, not talk of big ones. They talked about the chickens
and the cows, the flowers and the cauliflowers, about the children's
pranks. It was restoring to talk thus of inconsequential things; Ruth
was beginning to feel more herself than she had felt in years. On that
fifth day her step was lighter than when she came; it was easier to
laugh. Hers had once been so sunny a nature; it was amazingly easy to
break out of the moroseness with which circumstances had clouded her
into that native sunniness. That afternoon she sat on the knoll above
the house, leaning back against a tree and smiling lazily at the
gamboling of the new little pigs.

Annie was directing the boy who had been helping her cut asparagus to
carry the baskets up where Ruth was sitting. "I'm going to talk to you
while I make this into bunches, Ruth," she called.

"I'll help," Ruth called back with zest.

They talked at first of the idiosyncrasies of asparagus beds, of the
marketing of it; then something Annie said set Ruth thinking of
something that had happened when they were in high school. "Oh, do you
remember, Annie--" she laughingly began. There was tha