Shall I ever forget my feelings as I entered Winny's room, and saw her lying on her bed, so changed that she turned nearly sightless eyes upon me. Oh, how I hated myself for all the trouble I had given her! Days and nights passed as though in a dream, and through God's mercy Winny lived, but never to be very strong and well, never to entirely resume her old place at our head. Kate Ludlow came up and nursed her through those many weeks. She taught me many things to do, and contrived to place a great deal in my hands.
I think it was a year later, when Winny had gone off to the country with the Ludlows, that I received a package from Mr. Ludlow containing an engraving like the one in his room. With it were the following lines:
"DEAR RUTH,--Will you keep this from me in remembrance of last year, and as a sign that I _believe_ you will keep your high resolves? When I bring Winny home, I shall have something to tell you."
And so he had. A week later he and Winny arrived, and almost the first thing she did was to put her arms about me and tell me the news. She was engaged to be married to my kind friend.
Aunt Ruth paused in her story. Evening had come on while she finished it, and the room was too dark for us to see her face.
"Yes, dear," said Aunt Ruth, "and you all know what happiness she has had. So you see my temptation ended in Winny's peace."
We were silent a moment, and then Aunt Ruth said: "My story ought to help all of you a little, girls, one way or another. Try, resolve, and you can all conquer."
This is a fac-simile of a dainty note that I received one afternoon last month. As I looked at the wee, plump cook, in her cap and apron, tossing a ball in a frying-pan in the upper corner of the invitation, and the tiny cook merrily footing a jig in the lower corner, and then spied along the bottom the guests and musicians running for the special midnight train, I wondered whether these little Jersey maids were going to prepare us a wonderful supper, dance while it was baking, boiling, and cooling, invite us to partake of it, and then vanish, leaving us to scurry home like belated fairies fearing the dawn.
[Illustration: "TWO EGGS, WELL BEATEN, ONE CUP SUGAR--"]
A few days afterward I was being borne rapidly along toward Morristown in the train, now flying past loveliest stretches of woodland, catching glimpses of brown pools and flashes of silver brooks, and anon past meadows golden with buttercups, and fields snowed under by daisies: and was there ever so pretty a sight?