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Rh caused frequent comment among her elders, but not dissociated with the fear that she might, by her too great self-reliance, prove something of a thorn in her parents' flesh in years to come. Her comely figure, the grace of every movement, and the brightness of dark-blue eyes that the hideous bonnet of those bigoted days could not conceal, caused many a young head to be turned as she entered meeting, and this the elders, in sober array in the gallery, had too often noticed not to hint at the unseemliness of the habit. "It is a concern upon my mind that we should restrain our children more; their thoughts are too much of this world and too little of their souls' salvation," Friend Stacy had recently remarked, and Ruth had severely criticised him when she reached home. "Why should we be restrained from loving that which is neither a device of man nor the devil. There is color, music, gayety everywhere, except in our houses, and yet we are asked to turn our backs upon it. That's what his sermon amounts to. I can look, without offence, at a blooming rose, if