Page:Ruth Fielding at Lighthouse Point.djvu/57

Rh party. They called on Dr. Davison and the girl from the Red Mill managed to get a word in private with the first friend she had made on her arrival at Cheslow (barring Tom Cameron's mastiff, Reno) and told him of conditions as she had found them at home.

"So, it looks as though I had got to make my own way through school, Doctor, and it troubles me a whole lot," Ruth said to the grave physician. "But what bothers me, too, is Mercy"

"Don't worry about Goody Two-Sticks," returned the doctor, quickly. "Your uncle served notice on me a week before you came home that he could not help to put her through Briarwood beyond this term that is closed. I told him he needn't bother. Sam Curtis is in better shape than he was, and we'll manage to find the money to put that sharp little girl of his where she can get all the education she can possibly soak in. But you, Ruth"

"I'm going to find a way, too," declared Ruth, independently, yet secretly feeling much less confidence than she appeared to have.

Mercy was all ready for the seaside party when the girls called at the Curtis cottage. The lame girl was in her summer house, sewing and singing softly to herself. She no longer glared at the children as they ran by, or shook her fist at them as she used to, because they could dance and she could not.