Page:Ruth of the U.S.A. (IA ruthofusa00balm).pdf/93

 They were estimating American will and endurance, not by pretty faiths and protestations, but by what Americans, in their short history, had actually shown.

"But this is foreign war, of course;" the colonel qualified the judgment dubiously.

The man whose "present" house went back to 1582 nodded thoughtfully.

Ruth received all this eagerly; it could not in the least shake her own confidence in her people; but it gave her better comprehension of the ideas which Gerry Hull had gained from his association with Europeans. And this morning, when she was certain to meet him, she wished—oh she wished to an incredible degree—to understand him more fully than before. She learned from a remark of Captain Forraker's that Gerry Hull and Lady Agnes had breakfasted early and had gone out on deck. Ruth had intended to go on deck after breakfast; but now she changed her mind. She went to the saloon; and hardly was she there, when Gerry Hull and Lady Agnes came in from the cold.

They were laughing together at something which had happened without. Ruth saw them before either of them noticed her; and her heart halted in the excitement of expectancy during the instant Gerry Hull's glance went about the saloon. He saw her; nodded to her and looked at once to Lady Agnes, who immediately advanced to Ruth, greeting her cordially and with perfect recollection of having talked with her at Mrs. Corliss'. Upon this French ship bound for Europe, the English girl was at home as the Englishmen at the breakfast table had been; she felt herself, in a sense, a hostess of Ruth.