SOME vigorous planning was done that night which followed Ruth Burnham’s introduction to her new home. It was not restless planning; neither could it be said to be about new things, for these things Ruth had studied every day since the first week of her engagement, and the summer, which was in its spring-time then, was fading now, so she had thought before. But something had given her thoughts new strength and force. Ruth believed it to be that hour which she had spent alone on her knees. She had spent many an hour before that alone on her knees, but never had the power of the unseen presence taken such hold upon her as at that time. She had felt her own powerlessness as Ruth Erskine had not been given to feeling it, and you know it is “man’s extremity that is God’s opportunity.”

It was before the hour of breakfast that she commenced the process of developing some of her plans to her husband.

“How long will it take to dispose of the Ferris family?” she asked him, and her voice was so calm, so full of strength, and conscious determination that it rested him.

“It can be done just as soon as your genius, combined with my executive ability, can bring it to pass,” he answered, laughing, “and I sincerely hope and trust that you will be brilliant and rapid in your display of genius.”

“But, Judge Burnham, ought they to have warning, as we do with servants?”

“A week’s warning? I trust not! I should not promise to endure a week of it. Oh, they are prepared. I broadly hinted to them that the mistress would want the house to herself. If they had not felt the necessity of being here to welcome you it could have been managed before this. They have their plans formed, I believe, and as soon as you want to manage without them, I will make it for their interest to be in haste.”

Ruth turned toward him with a relieved smile and an eager air. “Could you manage, then, to make it to their interest to go before breakfast, or shall we have to wait until that meal is over?”

He laughed, gayly. “Your energy is refreshing,” he said, “especially when it is bestowed in such a worthy cause. No, I think we will have to wait until after breakfast. But, Ruth, are you really in earnest? Do you actually mean to settle down here, in this house, as it is? And what are you going to do about help, and about—well, everything?”

Before she answered she came over and stood beside him, slipping her hand through his arm and speaking in tender earnestness. “Judge Burnham, I want you to understand me; I feel that I may have seemed hard, and cold, and selfish. Perhaps I have been selfish in pushing my plan; I think I have been, but I did not intend it for selfishness. I was, and am, led by what seems to be our duty—yours and mine. Those girls of yours have been neglected. I can see how you, being a man, would not know what to do; at the same time I can see how I, being a woman, can at least try to do many things, and I am very eager to try. You may call it an experiment if you will, and if it is, in your estimation in six months from now an utter failure, I will give it up and do exactly as you propose.”

There was a gleam of assurance in her eyes, and he could see that she did not believe he would ever be called upon to follow his plans. But something tender and pleading in her tone touched him, and he said, with feeling:

“I begin to realize forcibly, what has only come upon me in touches heretofore—that I have not done my duty by the girls. I did not know what to do. I used to study the question and try to plan it, but I can not tell you how utterly hopeless it seemed to me. Finally, I gave it up. I determined that nothing could ever be done but to support them and live away from them, and long before I knew you I determined on that as my line of action. So your resolution was a surprise to me—an overwhelming one. But, perhaps, you are right. At least I will help you in whatever way I can to carry out your plans, however wild they are, and I begin to realize that you may possibly have some very wild ones, but I promise allegiance.”

“Good!” said Ruth, with sparkling eyes, “I ask nothing better than that. Then we will proceed at once to business; there is so much to be done that I don’t feel like taking a wedding journey just now. We can enjoy it so much more when we get our house in order. There are certain things that I need to know at once. First, how much or how little is there to be done to this house, and—and to everything? In other words, how much money am I to spend?”

“Oh,” he said looking relieved, “I thought you were going to ask me what ought to be done to make the place habitable, and, really, I hardly know where to commence. I shall be charmed to leave it in your hands. As to money, I think I may safely promise you what you need unless your ideas are on a more magnificent scale than I think. I will give you my check this morning for a thousand dollars, and when that is used you may come to me for as much more. Is that an answer to your question?”

“An entirely satisfactory one.” She answered him with shining eyes, and they went down to breakfast with a sense of satisfaction which, considering the surroundings and the marvelous calicoes in which the daughters of the house appeared, was surprising.

“I don’t see the way clear to results,” Judge Burnham said, perplexedly, as he and his wife walked on the piazza after breakfast and continued the discussion of ways and means. “If the Ferris tribe vacate to-day, as I have just intimated to the head of the family is extremely desirable, what are you to do for help until such time as something competent in that line can be secured, always supposing that there is such a thing in existence? I remember what an experience you have been having in your father’s house in the line of help.”

“Oh, well,” said Ruth, brightly, “we had the small-pox, you know; that makes a difference. They have excellent servants there now, and, indeed, we generally have had. My housekeeping troubles did not lie in that direction. I have a plan; I don’t know what you will think of it. I am afraid you will be very much surprised?”

“No, I shall not,” he interrupted her to say, “I have gotten beyond the condition of surprise at anything which you may do or propose.”

Then she went on with her story.

“I thought it all over last night, and if she will do it, I think I see my way clear, and I am almost sure she will, for, really, I never knew a more unselfish girl in my life.”

“I dare say,” her husband said, regarding her with an amused air. “Perhaps I might agree with you if you will enlighten me as to which of the patterns of domestic unselfishness you have in mind. Did she reign in your household since my knowledge of it began?”

“Oh, I am not speaking of hired help,” Ruth said, and a vivid flush brightened her cheeks. “I was thinking of my sister. It is her help I have in mind.”

“Susan!” he exclaimed, and then was suddenly silent. His face showed that, after all, she had surprised him.

There was much talk about it after that, and the discussion finally ended in their taking passage in the mail-wagon, about which Judge Burnham had spoken the day before, and jogging together to the train. There was so much to be done that Ruth had not the patience to wait until another day, besides their departure would give the Ferris family a chance to hasten their movements. On the way to the cars Judge Burnham mentally resolved that his first leisure moments should be spent in selecting horses and a driver, since he was to become a country gentleman. Whether he would or not, it became him to look out for conveniences.

Seated again in the train, and made comfortable by her watchful husband, Ruth took time to smile over the variety of experiences through which she had gone during the less than twenty-four hours since she sat there before. It seemed to her that she had lived a little life-time, and learned a great deal, and it seemed a wonderful thing that she was actually going to Susan Erskine with a petition for help. Who could have supposed that she, Ruth Erskine, would ever have reached such a period in her history that she would turn to her as the only a available source of supply and comfort. A great deal of thinking can be done in one night, and Ruth had lain awake and gone over her ground with steady gaze and a determined heart. It surprised her that things had not looked plainer to her before. “Why couldn’t I have seen this way, yesterday, before I left home?” she asked herself, but the wonder was that she had seen it thus early.

Very much surprised were the Erskine household to see their bride of less than twenty-four hours’ standing appear while they still lingered over their breakfast-table!

“We live in the country, you know,” was Ruth’s composed explanation of the early advent. “Country people are up hours before town people have stirred; I always knew that.”

“Land alive!” said Mrs. Judge Erskine, and then for a whole minute she was silent. She confided to Ruth, long afterward, that for about five minutes her “heart was in her mouth,” for she surely thought they had quarrelled and parted!

“Though I thought at the time,” she explained, “that if you had got sick of it a’ready you wouldn’t have come back together, and have walked into the dining-room in that friendly fashion. But, then, I remembered that you never did things like anybody else in this world, and if you had made up your mind to come back home again, and leave your husband, you would be sure to pick out a way of doing it that no other mortal would ever have thought of!”

“I am going to my room,” Ruth said presently. “Judge Burnham, I will hasten, and be ready to go down town with you in a very little while. Susan, will you come with me, please? I want to talk to you.”

And Susan arose with alacrity, a pleasant smile lighting her plain face. There was a sound of sisterliness in the tone, which she had watched and waited for, but rarely heard.

“I have come on the strangest errand,” Ruth said, dropping into her own favorite chair, as the door of her old room closed after them. “I feel as if I were at least a year older than I was yesterday. I have thought so much. First of all, Susan, I want to tell you something. I have found something. I have come close to Jesus—I mean he has come close to me. He has almost shown me himself. I don’t know how to tell you about it, and indeed I am not sure that there is anything to tell. But it is a great deal to have experienced. I seem to have heard him say, ‘Come to me. Why do you struggle and plan and toss yourself about? Haven’t I promised you rest?’ And, Susan, I do believe he spoke to my heart; why not?”

“Why not, indeed!” said Susan, “when he has repeated the message so many times. Ruth, I am so glad!”

Then Ruth ran rapidly from that subject to less important ones, giving her sister a picture, in brief, of the new home, closing with the sentence:

“Now I am in a dilemma. I can’t keep any of the Ferris family for an hour, and I can’t introduce new servants until things are in different shape, and I can’t get them into different shape until I have help. Do you see what I am to do?”

“Yes,” said Susan, with a bright smile, “you need a sister; one who knows how to help in all household matters, and yet who knows how to keep her tongue reasonably quiet as to what she found. I know how servants gossip, some of them. That Rosie we had for a week tried to tell me things about Mrs. Dr. Blakeman’s kitchen that would make her feel like fainting if she knew it. A sister is just exactly what you need in this emergency. Will you let her step into the gap and show you how nicely she can fill it?”

“Will you?” Ruth asked, eagerly. “That is just exactly what I wanted to say, though I didn’t like to say it, for fear you would misunderstand, not realize, you know, that it is because we don’t want to go out of the family for assistance just now that we needed you so much.”

Recognized at last in words as a member of the family! An unpremeditated sentence, evidently from the heart. It was what Susan Erskine had been patiently biding her time and waiting for. It had come sooner than she expected. It made her cheeks glow.

“I will go home with you at once,” she said, in a business-like way. “There is nothing to hinder. The machinery of this house is in running order again. That new second girl is a treasure, Ruth, and, by the way, she has a sister who might develop into a treasure for you. Now let me see if I understand things. What do you want to do first?”

“First,” said Ruth, smiling, “I need to go shopping. It is my forte, you know. I like to buy things, and at last there is certainly occasion for my buying. Susan, you have no idea how much is wanted. Everything in every line is necessary, and Judge Burnham has left all to me. We need paper-hangers and painters, and all that sort of thing, but of course he will attend to those things. Our plan is to return to-night with a load of necessities. Judge Burnham is going to hire a team at once, and have it loaded. But what are the first necessities? Where shall I begin?”

“Begin with a pencil and paper,” said Susan, seizing upon them and seating herself. “Now, let us be methodical. My teacher in mathematics once told me that I was nothing if I was not methodical. Kitchen first—no, dining-room, because we shall have to eat even before we get the house in order. What is a necessity to that table before you can have a comfortable meal?”

Then they plunged into business. Two women, thoroughly in earnest, pencil and paper in hand, bank check in pocket, organization well developed in both of them, and the need of speed apparent, can accomplish surprising things in the way of plans in an hour of time, especially when one is persistently methodical.

When Mrs. Burnham arose and drew her wrap around her preparatory to joining the husband, who was waiting below, she felt as though a week’s work had been accomplished. Besides, they had been cheery together, these two—been in a different mood toward each other from what had ever appeared before. Susan was so sensible, so quick-witted, so clear-sighted as to what needed doing first, and as to ways of doing the soonest, and withal her matter-of-course way of saying “we” when she spoke of the work to arrange, made her appear such a tower of strength to Ruth, who knew so well her own delinquencies in the direction of housework, and who had thoroughly tested Susan’s practical knowledge.

“Land alive!” ejaculated Mrs. Erskine, when, after Ruth’s departure, the new arrangements were presented to her for approval. “Who would have thought she would have to come after you, in less than a day after she set out to do for herself. So capable as she is, too, though I don’t suppose she knows much more than a kitten about housework. How should she? Well, I’m glad I had you learn all them things. What we’d have done this winter if I hadn’t is more than I can see through. Well, well, child, I don’t know how we are going to get along without you. Your pa sets great store by you; I can see it every day; and what if I should have another turn of sick headache while you’re gone! Though, for that matter, I don’t believe I will. I guess going through the small-pox cured them headaches. I ain’t had one since. And so she needs you right off? Well, poor thing! I don’t know what she would do without you, I’m sure. Them girls ain’t efficient, I dare say; girls never are. You learn ’em how, Susan; you can do it, if anybody can, and that’ll be doing ’em a good turn.”

Susan discreetly kept her own counsel about “them girls,” and quietly and swiftly packed her satchel, not without an exultant song at her heart. This beautiful sister, whose love she had craved, seemed very near to her this morning.