Ruth sat in her room making her parcels gay with gold cord and sprigs of holly until she heard Mrs. Hamilton calling her.  Then she went down-stairs to find the family assembled in the dining-room for a light and early supper.  Until they had met at the table it had not occurred to Ruth to wonder how Arthur would take this sudden festivity.

So it was with real purpose but with an apparently careless manner that she stopped him on his way to the stairs to say, “Do be down before any one comes, for I want you to help me out.  I feel really embarrassed over my first party.”

“I’m not coming down,” he answered abruptly.

“Not coming down?  Oh, Arthur, that’s too bad of you.  Does your mother know?”

“No, not yet.  I told her I’d try, and I have, but I can’t manage it.”  Arthur’s face and manner were so forlorn that it took all Ruth’s courage to continue.  She glanced around but there was no one within hearing, and at last she said, “Why won’t you come down?  Is it because you can’t bear to have the boys and girls see you on crutches?”

Arthur nodded uncomfortably.  He hated to talk of this to any one, and he hadn’t expected any determined interference in his plans.

“Don’t you suppose they ail know about it?  And if they do will just seeing you make any difference?” continued Ruth, quite surprised at her own eloquence, and still persistently barring the way to the stairs.  “I know that they are all longing to have you with them again, and that none of the good times seem the same without you.  I heard Frank and Joe say the other day that if you kept up this sort of thing much longer they were going to make a raid on your room and have it out with you.”

“I wish they would,” answered Arthur gloomily.  “Perhaps they might knock some sense into me.”

“Well, if you want to know what I think,” Ruth went on, feeling that her courage was fast departing, and on that very account growing more and more severe, “I think it’s cowardly to shut yourself away from your friends and spoil everything like this.  I dare say you are one of the very boys who think that ail girls are cry-babies, but I can’t see why it isn’t playing baby to do as you are doing.”

CHAPTER XI

ARTHUR COMES BACK

As soon as Arthur was out of sight Ruth flew up the stairs and into her room.

“Oh, dear!  Now I have done it!” she thought, throwing herself on the couch and clasping her hands behind her head.  “Just as we were beginning to be good friends, too.  Why didn’t I keep still and let his mother manage it?”

Ruth’s cheeks were very red and her hands hot and unsteady as she put on her dainty silk gown.  She had expected to enjoy the evening so much, and now, for the moment, at least, she would be thankful if there were to be no party.  She tormented herself by thinking that perhaps if she had not interfered things might have gone better.  What boy could ever forgive being called a coward and a baby?  Would she, herself, have been braver or more cheerful if she had suddenly been condemned to crutches and so inactive a life?