Aunt Jane looked at her kindly, with gratified pride beaming from
every feature. "I wish you'd teach me to cook, Aunty," she continued,
following up her advantage, "you know I'm going to marry Mr. Winfield."
"Why, yes, I'll teach you--where is he?"
"He's outside--I just came in to speak to you a minute."
"You can ask him to supper if you want to."
"Thank you, Aunty, that's lovely of you. I know he'll like to stay."
"James," said Mrs. Ball, "you're peelin' them pertaters with thick
peelins' and you'll land in the poorhouse. I've never knowed it to fail."
"I wanted to ask you something, Aunty," Ruth went on quickly, though
feeling that the moment was not auspicious, "you know all that old
furniture up in the attic?"
"Well, what of it?"
"Why--why--you aren't using it, you know, and I thought perhaps you'd be
willing to give it to us, so that we can go to housekeeping as soon as
we're married."
"It was your grandmother's," Aunt Jane replied after long thought, "and,
as you say, I ain't usin' it. I don't know but what you might as well
have it as anybody else. I lay out to buy me a new haircloth parlour
suit with that two hundred dollars of James's--he give the minister the
hull four dollars over and above that--and--yes, you can have it," she
concluded.
Ruth kissed her, with real feeling. "Thank you so much, Aunty. It will be
lovely to have something that was my grandmother's."
When she went back to Winfield, he was absorbed in a calculation he was
making on the back of an envelope.
"You're not to use your eyes," she said warningly, "and, oh Carl! It was
my grandmother's and she's given us every bit of it, and you're to stay
to supper!"
"Must be in a fine humour," he observed. "I'm ever so glad. Come here,
darling, you don't know how I've missed you."
"I've been earning furniture," she said, settling down beside him.
"People earn what they get from Aunty--I won't say that, though, because
it's mean."
"Tell me about this remarkable furniture. What is it, and how much of it
is destined to glorify our humble cottage?"
"It's all ours," she returned serenely, "but I don't know just how
much there is. I didn't look at it closely, you know, because I never
expected to have any of it. Let's see--there's a heavy dresser, and a
large, round table, with claw feet--that's our dining-table, and there's
a bed, just like those in the windows in town, when it's done over, and
there's a big old-fashioned sofa, and a spinning-wheel--"
"Are you going to spin?"
"Hush, don't interrupt. There are five chairs--dining-room chairs, and
two small tables, and a card table with a leaf that you can stand up
against the wall, and two lovely rockers, and I don't know what else."