CHAPTER I.
"Dear heart, Miss Ruth, my dear, now don't ye be a-going yet, and me that hasn't set eyes on ye this month and more--and as hardly hears a body speak from morning till night." "Come, come, Mrs.Eccles, I am always finding people sitting here.

I expect to see the latch go every minute." "Well, and if they do; and some folks are always a-dropping in, and a-setting theirselves down, and a clack-clacking till a body can't get a bit of peace! And the things they say! Eh?
Miss Ruth, the things I have heard folks say, a setting as it might be there, in poor Eccles his old chair by the chimley, as the Lord took him in." To the uninitiated, Mrs.Eccles's allusion might have seemed to refer to photography.

But Ruth knew better; a visitation from the Lord being synonymous in Slumberleigh Parish with a fall from a ladder, a stroke of paralysis, or the midnight cart-wheel that disabled Brown when returning late from the Blue Dragon "not quite hisself." "Lor'!" resumed Mrs.Eccles, with an extensive sigh, "there's a deal of talk in the village now," glancing inquisitively at the visitor, "about him as succeeds to old Mr.Dare; but I never listen to their tales." They made a pleasant contrast to each other, the neat old woman, with her shrewd spectacled eyes and active, hard-worked fingers, and the young girl, tranquil, graceful, sitting in the shadow, with her slender ungloved hands in her lap.
They were not sitting in the front parlor, because Ruth was an old acquaintance; but Mrs.Eccles _had_ a front parlor--a front parlor with the bottled-up smell in it peculiar to front parlors; a parlor with a real mahogany table, on which photograph albums and a few select volumes were symmetrically arranged round an inkstand, nestling in a very choice wool-work mat; a parlor with wax-flowers under glass shades on the mantle-piece, and an avalanche of paper roses and mixed paper herbs in the fireplace.
Ruth knew that sacred apartment well.

She knew the name of each of the books; she had expressed a proper admiration for the wax-flowers; she had heard, though she might have forgotten, for she was but young, the price of the "real Brussels" carpet, and so she might safely be permitted to sit in the kitchen, and watch Mrs.Eccles darning her son's socks.
I am almost afraid Ruth liked the kitchen best, with its tiled floor and patch of afternoon sun; with its tall clock in the corner, its line of straining geraniums in the low window-shelf, and its high mantle-piece crowned by two china dogs with red lozenges on them, holding baskets in their mouths.
"Yes, a deal of talk there is, but nobody rightly seems to know anything for certain," continued Mrs.Eccles, spreading out her hand in the heel of a fresh sock, and pouncing on a modest hole.

"Ye see, we never gave a thought to _him_, with that great hearty Mr.George, his eldest brother, to succeed when the old gentleman went.