quite grasped how sorry He is when He is obliged to hurt us." And as
I did not know how to answer her, she begged me to fetch the book,
and she would show me the passage for myself.




CHAPTER XII.

I WAS NOT LIKE OTHER GIRLS.


I had no idea Miss Ruth could talk as she did that night. She seemed
to open her heart to me with the simplicity of a child, giving me a
deeper insight into a very lovely nature. Carrie had hitherto been my
ideal, but on this night I caught myself wondering once or twice
whether Carrie would ever exercise such patience and uncomplaining
endurance under so many crossed purposes, such broken work.

"I was never quite like other people," she said to me when I had
closed the book; "you know I was a mere infant in my nurse's arms,
when that accident happened." I nodded, for I had heard the sad
details from Uncle Geoffrey; how an unbroken pair of young horses had
shied across the road just as the nurse who was carrying Miss Ruth
was attempting to cross it; the nurse had been knocked down and
dreadfully injured, and her little charge had been violently thrown
against the curb, and it had been thought by the doctor that one of
the horses must have kicked her. For a long time she lay in a state
of great suffering, and it was soon known that her health had
sustained permanent injury.