feet. One and all, they had been compelled to pick them up and take
them elsewhere. She was generally kind on these occasions, but always
very firm. The determined chin gave no hope that she might yield to
importunity. The eyes that backed up the message of the chin were
pleasant, but inflexible.

Generally it was with a feeling akin to relief that the rejected, when
time had begun to heal the wound, contemplated their position. There
was something about this girl, they decided, which no fellow could
understand: she frightened them; she made them feel that their hands
were large and red and their minds weak and empty. She was waiting for
something. What it was they did not know, but it was plain that they
were not it, and off they went to live happily ever after with girls
who ate candy and read best-sellers. And Ruth went on her way, cool and
watchful and mysterious, waiting.

The room which Ruth had taken for her own gave, like all rooms when
intelligently considered, a clue to the character of its owner. It was
the only room in the house furnished with any taste or simplicity. The
furniture was exceedingly expensive, but did not look so. The key-note
of the colour-scheme was green and white. All round the walls were
books. Except for a few prints, there were no pictures; and the only
photograph visible stood in a silver frame on a little table.

It was the portrait of a woman of about fifty, square-jawed,
tight-lipped, who stared almost threateningly out of the frame;
exceedingly handsome, but, to the ordinary male, too formidable
to be attractive. On this was written in a bold hand, bristling
with emphatic down-strokes and wholly free from feminine flourish:
"To my dear Ruth from her Aunt Lora." And below the signature, in