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 learning nothing of importance, and so, why not a single leaf? There was ever so much to tell John, and when, at last willing to risk it, she thought of the ink-horn locked in her step-father's desk and no knife to whittle a goose-quill. "How did Robert expect me to write to him, with my blood smeared on the paper with a stick?" she said, aloud, and made the little room ring. "What a helpless creature I am! But it will not be always so." And Ruth went again to the window and looked out over the country for some time. Then she turned about and showed a face wreathed in smiles. "How they'll stare and start if it works!" she exclaimed, and, looking towards John's shop, she kissed her hand to the smoke that rose from its chimney and whispered, "Good-by, dear."

"Ruth dear," her mother said, as her daughter walked demurely into the kitchen, "father is concerned to have a religious meeting held here next Fifth day, and desires that thee should know it."

"Brother told me this morning, mother; I suppose he overheard father speaking of it."