CHAPTER XVIII — RUBY RUGGLES HEARS A LOVE TALE

Ruby Ruggles, the granddaughter of old Daniel Ruggles, of Sheep’s Acre, in the parish of Sheepstone, close to Bungay, received the following letter from the hands of the rural post letter-carrier on that Sunday morning;—­’A friend will be somewhere near Sheepstone Birches between four and five o’clock on Sunday afternoon.’  There was not another word in the letter, but Miss Ruby Ruggles knew well from whom it came.

Daniel Ruggles was a farmer, who had the reputation of considerable wealth, but who was not very well looked on in the neighbourhood as being somewhat of a curmudgeon and a miser.  His wife was dead;—­he had quarrelled with his only son, whose wife was also dead, and had banished him from his home;—­his...