She got up in a little while, bathed her face and eyes, and kissed Aunt Alvirah warmly.

“You are a dear!” she declared, hugging the little old woman.  “Come!  I won’t cry any more.  I’ll come down stairs with you, Auntie, and help get dinner.”

But Ruth could eat none herself.  She did not feel as though she could even sit at the table with Uncle Jabez that noon, and remained outside while the miller ate.  He never remarked upon her absence, or paid her the least attention.  Oh, how heartily Ruth wished now that she had never come away from Darrowtown and had never seen the Red Mill.

The next Monday morning the rural mail carrier brought her a long letter from Helen.  Uncle Jabez had not said anything against a correspondence; indeed, Ruth did not consider that he had more than refused to have the Camerons come to see her or she to return their visits.  If she met them on the road, or away from the house, she did not consider that it would be disobeying Uncle Jabez to associate with Helen and Tom.

This letter from Helen was very bitter against the miller and wildly proposed that Ruth should run away from the Red Mill and come to Overlook to live.  She declared that her papa would not object—­ indeed, that everybody would warmly welcome the appearance of Ruth Fielding “even if she came like a tramp “; and that Tom would linger about the Red Mill for an hour or two every evening so that Ruth could slip out and communicate with her friends, or could be helped away if she wanted to leave without the miller’s permission.

But Ruth, coming now to consider her situation more dispassionately, simply wrote a loving letter in reply to Helen’s, entrusting it to the post, and went on upon her usual way, helping Aunt Alviry, going to school, and studying harder than ever.  She missed Helen’s companionship vastly; she often wet her pillow with tears at night (and that was not like Ruth) and felt very miserable indeed at times.

But school and its routine took up a deal of the girl’s thought.  Her studies confined her more and more as the end of the term approached.  And in addition to the extra work assigned the girl at the Red Mill by Miss Cramp, there was a special study which Ruth wished to excel in.  Miss Cramp was old-fashioned enough to believe that spelling was the very best training for the mind and the memory and that it was a positive crime for any child to grow up to be a slovenly speller.  Four times a year Miss Cramp held an old-fashioned “spelling-bee” at the schoolhouse, on designated Friday evenings; and now came the last of the four for this school year.

Ruth had never been an extra good speller, but because her kind teacher was so insistent upon the point, the girl from the Red Mill put forth special efforts to please Miss Cramp in this particular.  She had given much spare time to the study of the spelling book, and particularly did she devote herself to that study now that she hadn’t her chum to associate with.