A Colonial Wooing
attempts at further preaching. Things took a rather more cheerful and certainly a far more practical turn; for not an old woman among them but was sure that the accident would end in a fever,—did not Ruth's strange manner plainly point that way?—and so had brought an abundance of their remedies. What a display was there upon the kitchen table! Every herb that ever grew in West Jersey was generously represented; and if every considerate Friend was to be duly considered, there was no escaping a watery death after all. As Ruth said to her mother, when the last visitor had departed, "I do not know but I had rather choke in Crosswicks Creek than be drowned in a deluge of herb tea. The taste wouldn't be so bad."
Ruth's mother gently laughed, and while the smile yet played upon her patient mouth Matthew Watson entered with a frown and contracted brows that showed trouble was brewing. Ruth noticed it, and in a moment felt that she was the cause of her step-father's ill-humor, if such it proved to be.
"Just see here, father, what the neighbors
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