The village clock struck six.  Tony sprang up from her blanket and began to gather up her possessions.

“I never get over a scared, going-to-be-scolded feeling running down my spine when the clock strikes and I’m not ready for supper,” she said.  “Poor dear Granny!  She certainly worked hard trying to make truly proper persons out of us wild Arabs.  It isn’t her fault if she didn’t succeed, is it Larry?” She smiled at her brother—­a smile that meant in Tony language “I am sorry I was cross.  Let’s make up.”

He smiled back in the same spirit.  He rose taking the rug and magazines from his sister’s hand and walked with her toward the house.

Ruth sat up in her hammock and smoothed her disarrayed blonde hair.

“I am glad you are going down the Hill,” said the doctor to her.  “It is a fine idea, little lady.  Do you lots of good.”

“Doctor Holiday, I think I ought to go away,” announced Ruth suddenly.  “I am perfectly well now, and there is no reason why I should stay.”

“Tired of us?”

“Oh no!  I could never be that.  I love it here and love all of you.  But after all I am only a stranger.”

“Not to us, Ruthie.  Listen.  I would like to explain how I feel about this, not from your point of view but from ours.”

Tony would be going away soon.  They needed a home daughter very much, needed Ruth particularly as she had such a wonderful way with the children, who adored her, and because Granny loved her so well, though she did not love many people who were not Holidays.  And he and Larry needed her good fairy ministrations.  They had not been unmindful, though perhaps manlike they had not expressed their appreciation of the way fresh flowers found their way to the offices daily, and they were kept from being snowed under by the newspapers of yester week.  In short Doctor Holiday made it very clear that, if Ruth cared to stay she was wanted and needed very much in the House on the Hill.  And Ruth touched and grateful and happy promised to remain.

“If you think it is all right—­” she added with rather sudden blush, “for me to stay when I am married or not married and don’t know which.”

Whereupon Doctor Holiday, who happened not to observe the blush, remarked that he couldn’t see what that had to do with it.  Anyway she seemed like such a child to them that they hardly remembered the wedding ring at all.

Ruth blushed again at that and wished she dared confess that she was afraid the wedding ring had a good deal to do with the situation in the eyes of one Holiday at least.  But she could not bring herself to speak the fatal word which might banish her from the dear Hill and from Larry, who had come to be even dearer.

A dozen times, while she was dressing for the dance later, Ruth felt like crying out to Tony in the next room that she could not go, that she dared not face strangers, that it was too hard.  But she set her lips firmly and did nothing of the sort.  Larry wanted her to do it.  She wouldn’t disappoint him if it killed her.