o you intend to be married, Ruth?"

My sister's expression clouded. She smiled, and shook her head. "I don't
know," she said, "I wish I did. Years are so precious when one is
concealing a little nest of gray hairs behind one's left ear. Bob and I
have got to wait. You see Bob wasn't planning for this. He had some idea
a career would always satisfy me. He hasn't been saving. He has put
about all he has been able to earn into fighting for clean politics. I
myself haven't been able to lay by but a paltry thousand. Madge comes
home in May. I shall then probably have to look up another job for
myself somewhere or other, while Bob's establishing himself and making
ready for me out there."

Will cleared his throat and coughed. He had simply stared until now. "I
suppose," he said, as if in an attempt to lighten the conversation with
a little light humor, "I suppose a legacy of some sort wouldn't prove
unwelcome to you and Bob just about now."

It must have struck Ruth as a stereotyped attempt at fun. But she smiled
and replied in the same vein, "I think we'd know how to make use of a
portion of it." Then she rose. The door bell had rung sharply twice.
"There he is," she explained. "There's Bob now. I'll let him in."

She went out into the hall and pressed the button that released the lock
of the door three floors below.

I knew how fleeting every minute of last hours before train-time can be.
I motioned to Will, and when Ruth came back to us I said, "We'll just
run down the back way, Ruth."

She flashed me an appreciative glance. "You don't need to," she
deprecated.

"Still, we will," I assured her, and then I went over and kissed my
radiant sister.

Her face was illumined as it used to be years ago when Robert Jennings
was on his way to her. The same old tenderness gleamed in her
larger-visioned eyes.

"When he comes read this together," I said, and I slipped the envelope,
with the clipping inside it, into her hands.

Then Will and I went out through the kitchen, and down the back stairs.

THE END

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Fifth Wheel, by Olive Higgins Prouty

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