“What if the angels had said that before they came down to Bethlehem!”

Then she knew by the hush that she had astonished them, and she grew frightened; but she stood just so, and would not let her look shrink; for she still felt just as she did when the words came.

Mrs. Van Alstyne broke the pause with a good-natured laugh.

“We can’t go quite back to that, every time,” she said.  “And we don’t quite set up to be angels.  Come,—­try one more round.”

And with some of the hoops still hanging upon her arm, she turned to pick up the others.  Harry Goldthwaite of course sprang forward to do it for her; and presently she was tossing them with her peculiar grace, till the stake was all wreathed with them from bottom to top, the last hoop hanging itself upon the golden ball; a touch more dexterous and consummate, it seemed, than if it had fairly slidden over upon the rest.

[Illustration]

Rosamond knew what a cunning and friendly turn it was; if it had not been for Mrs. Van Alstyne, Ruth’s speech would have broken up the party.  As it was, the game began again, and they stayed an hour longer.

Not all of them; for as soon as they were fairly engaged, Ruth said to Leslie Goldthwaite, “I must go now; I ought to have gone before.  Reba will be waiting for me.  Just tell them, if they ask.”

But Leslie and the cadet walked away with her; slowly, across the grounds, so that she thought they were going back from the gate; but they kept on up over the hill.

“Was it very shocking?” asked Ruth, troubled in her mind.  “I could not help it; but I was frightened to death the next minute.”

“About as frightened as the man is who stands to his gun in the front,” said Dakie Thayne.  “You never flinched.”

“They would have thought it was from what I had said,” Ruth answered.  “And that was another thing from the saying.”

“You had something to say, Leslie.  It was just on the corner of your lip.  I saw it.”

“Yes; but Ruth said it all in one flash.  It would have spoiled it if I had spoken then.”

“I’m always sorry for people who don’t know how,” said Ruth.  “I’m sure I don’t know how myself so often.”

“That is just it,” said Leslie.  “Why shouldn’t these girls come up?  And how will they ever, unless somebody overlooks?  They would find out these mistakes in a little while, just as they find out fashions:  picking up the right things from people who do know how.  It is a kind of leaven, like greater good.  And how can we stand anywhere in the lump, and say it shall not spread to the next particle?”

“They think it was pushing of them, to come here to live at all,” said Ruth.

“Well, we’re all pushing, if we’re good for anything,” said Leslie.  “Why mayn’t they push, if they don’t crowd out anybody else?  It seems to me that the wrong sort of pushing is pushing down.”