Poor Ruby had endured a very painful incarceration at her aunt’s house.  She had been wrathful and had stormed, swearing that she would be free to come and go as she pleased.  Free to go, Mrs Pipkin told her that she was;—­but not free to return if she went out otherwise than as she, Mrs Pipkin, chose.  ‘Am I to be a slave?’ Ruby asked, and almost upset the perambulator which she had just dragged in at the hall door.  Then Mrs Hurtle had taken upon herself to talk to her, and poor Ruby had been quelled by the superior strength of the American lady.  But she was very unhappy, finding that it did not suit her to be nursemaid to her aunt.  After all John Crumb couldn’t have cared for her a...