RUBY goes about her work and play very gravely for the next few days. A great sorrow sits at her heart which only time can lighten and chase away. She is very lonely, this little girl—lonely without even knowing it, but none the less to be pitied on that account. To her step-mother Ruby never even dreams of turning for comfort or advice in her small troubles and griefs. Dad is his little girl’s confidant; but, then, dad is often away, and in Mrs. Thorne’s presence Ruby never thinks of confiding in her father.

It is a hot sunny morning in the early months of the new year. Ruby is riding by her father’s side along the river’s bank, Black Prince doing his very best to accommodate his long steps to Smuttie’s slower amble. Far over the long flats of uncultivated bush-land hangs a soft blue haze, forerunner of a day of intense heat. But Ruby and dad are early astir this morning, and it is still cool and fresh with the beautiful young freshness of a glorious summer morning.

“It’s lovely just now,” Ruby says, with a little sigh of satisfaction. “I wish it would always stay early morning; don’t you, dad? It’s like where it says in the hymn about ‘the summer morn I’ve sighed for.’ P’raps that means that it will always be morning in heaven. I hope it will.”

“It will be a very fair summer morn anyway, little girl,” says dad, a sudden far-away look coming into his brown eyes.

At the child’s words, his thoughts have gone back with a sudden rush of memory to another summer’s morning, long, long ago, when he knelt by the bedside where his young wife lay gasping out her life, and watched Ruby’s mother go home to God. “I’ll be waiting for you, Will,” she had whispered only a little while before she went away. “It won’t be so very long, my darling; for even heaven won’t be quite heaven to me with you away.” And as the dawning rose over the purple hill-tops, and the birds’ soft twitter-twitter gave glad greeting to the new-born day, the angels had come for Ruby’s mother, and the dawning for her had been the glorious dawning of heaven.

Many a year has passed away since then, sorrowfully enough at first for the desolate husband, all unheeded by the child, who never missed her mother because she never knew her. Nowadays new hopes, new interests have come to Will Thorne, dimming with their fresher links the dear old days of long ago. He has not forgotten the love of his youth, never will; but time has softened the bitterness of his sorrow, and caused him to think but with a gentle regret of the woman whom God had called away in the suntime of her youth. But Ruby’s words have come to him this summer morning awakening old memories long slumbering, and his thoughts wander from the dear old days, up—up—up to God’s land on high, where, in the fair summer morning of Paradise, one is waiting longingly, hopefully—one who, even up in heaven, will be bitterly disappointed if those who in the old days she loved more than life itself will not one day join her there.

“Dad,” Ruby asks quickly, uplifting a troubled little face to that other dear one above her, “what is the matter? You looked so sorry, so very sorry, just now,” adds the little girl, with something almost like a sob.

“Sorry. Did I?” says the father, with a swift sudden smile. He bends down to the little figure riding by his side, and strokes the soft, brown hair. “I was thinking of your mother, Ruby,” dad says. “But instead of looking sorry I should have looked glad, that for her all tears are for ever past, and that nothing can ever harm her now. I was thinking of her at heaven’s gate, darling, watching, as she said she would, for you and for me.”

“I wonder,” says Ruby, with very thoughtful brown eyes, “how will I know her? And how will she know me, dad? God will have to tell her, won’t He? And p’raps I’ll be quite grown up ’fore I die, and mother won’t think it’s her own little Ruby at all. I wish I knew,” adds the child, in a puzzled voice.

“God will make it all right, dear. I have no fear of that,” says the father, quickly.

It is not often that Ruby and he talk as they are doing now. Like all true Scotchmen, he is reticent by nature, reverencing that which is holy too much to take it lightly upon his lips. As for Ruby, she has never even thought of such things. In her gay, sunny life she has had no time to think of the mother awaiting her coming in the land which to Ruby, in more senses than one, is “very far off.”

Far in the distance the early sunshine gleams on the river, winding out and in like a silver thread. The tall trees stand stiffly by its banks, their green leaves faintly rustling in the soft summer wind. And above all stretches the blue, blue sky, flecked here and there by a fleecy cloud, beyond which, as the children tell us, lies God’s happiest land.

It is a fair scene, and one which Ruby’s eyes have gazed on often, with but little thought or appreciation of its beauty. But to-day her thoughts are far away, beyond another river which all must pass, where the shadows only fall the deeper because of the exceeding brightness of the light beyond. And still another river rises before the little girl’s eyes, a river, clear as crystal, the “beautiful, beautiful river” by whose banks the pilgrimage of even the most weary shall one day cease, the burden of even the most heavy-laden, one day be laid down. On what beauties must not her mother’s eyes be now gazing! But even midst the joy and glory of the heavenly land, how can that fond, loving heart be quite content if Ruby, one far day, is not to be with her there?

All the way home the little girl is very thoughtful, and a strange quietness seems to hang over usually merry Ruby for the remainder of the day.

But towards evening a great surprise is in store for her. Dick, whose duty it is, when his master is otherwise engaged, to ride to the nearest post-town for the letters, arrives with a parcel in his bag, addressed in very big letters to “Miss Ruby Thorne.” With fingers trembling with excitement the child cuts the string. Within is a long white box, and within the box a doll more beautiful than Ruby has ever even imagined, a doll with golden curls and closed eyes, who, when set upright, discloses the bluest of blue orbs. She is dressed in the daintiest of pale blue silk frocks, and tiny bronze shoes encase her feet. She is altogether, as Ruby ecstatically exclaims, “a love of a doll,” and seems but little the worse for her long journey across the briny ocean.

“It’s from Jack!” cries Ruby, her eyes shining. “Oh, and here’s a letter pinned to dolly’s dress! What a nice writer he is!” The child’s cheeks flush redly, and her fingers tremble even more as she tears the envelope open. “I’ll read it first to myself, mamma, and then I’ll give it to you.”

“My dear Little Ruby” (so the letter runs),

“I have very often thought of you since last we parted, and now do myself the pleasure of sending madam across the sea in charge of my letter to you. She is the little bird I would ask to whisper of me to you now and again, and if you remember your old friend as well as he will always remember you, I shall ask no more. How are the dollies? Bluebell and her other ladyship—I have forgotten her name. I often think of you this bleak, cold weather, and envy you your Australian sunshine just as, I suppose, you often envy me my bonnie Scotland. I am looking forward to the day when you are coming home on that visit you spoke of. We must try and have a regular jollification then, and Edinburgh, your mother’s home, isn’t so far off from Greenock but that you can manage to spend some time with us. My mother bids me say that she will expect you and your people. Give my kindest regards to your father and mother, and, looking forward to next Christmas,

“I remain, my dear little Ruby red,
“Your old friend,
“Jack.”

“Very good of him to take so much trouble on a little girl’s account,” remarks Mrs. Thorne, approvingly, when she too has perused the letter. “And what an exquisite doll! You must certainly write and thank Mr. Kirke, Ruby. It is the least you can do, after his kindness, and I am sure he would like to have a letter from you.”

“I just love him,” says Ruby, squeezing her doll closer to her. “I wish I could call the doll after him; but then, ‘Jack’ would never do for a lady’s name. I know what I’ll do!” with a little dance of delight. “I’ll call her ‘May’ after the little girl who gave Jack the card, and I’ll call her ‘Kirke’ for her second name, and that’ll be after Jack. I’ll tell him that when I write, and I’d better send him back his card too.”

That very evening, Ruby sits down to laboriously compose a letter to her friend.

“My dear Jack” (writes Ruby in her large round hand),

[“I don’t know what else to say,” murmurs the little girl, pausing with her pen uplifted. “I never wrote a letter before.”

“Thank him for the doll, of course,” advises Mrs. Thorne, with an amused smile. “That is the reason for your writing to him at all, Ruby.”

So Ruby, thus adjured, proceeds—]

“Thank you very much for the doll. She is just a lovely doll. I am calling her ‘May Kirke,’ after the name on your card, and after your own name; because I couldn’t call her ‘Jack.’ We are having very hot weather yet; but not so hot as when you were here. The dolls are not quite well, because Fanny fell under old Hans’ waggon, and the waggon went over her face and squashed it. I am very sorry, because I liked her, but your doll will make up. Thank you for writing me. Mamma says I am to send her kindest regards to you. It won’t be long till next Christmas now. I am sending you back your card.

“With love, from your little friend,

“Ruby.

“P.S.—Dad has come in now, and asks me to remember him to you. I have had to write this all over again; mamma said it was so badly spelt.”

Jack Kirke’s eyes soften as he reads the badly written little letter, and it is noticeable that when he reaches a certain point where two words, “May Kirke,” appear, he stops and kisses the paper on which they are written.

Such are the excessively foolish antics of young men who happen to be in love.