Tom Cameron looked funny enough in some of the miller’s garments; but he was none the worse for his bath in the river. He, too, had been dosed with hot tea by Aunt Alvirah, though he made a wry face over it.

“Never you mind, boy,” Ruth told him, laughing. “It is better to have a bad taste in your mouth for a little while than a sore throat for a week.”

“Hear! hear the philosopher!” cried Tom. “You’d think I was a tender little blossom.”

“You know, you might have the croup,” suggested Ruth, wickedly.

“Croup! What am I-a kid?” demanded Tom, half angry at this suggestion. He had begun to notice that his sister and Ruth were inclined to set him down as a “small boy” nowadays.

“How is it,” Tom asked his father one day, “that Helen is all grown up of a sudden? I’m not! Everybody treats me just as they always have; but even Colonel Post takes off his hat to our Helen on the street with overpowering politeness, and the other men speak to her as though she were as old as Mrs. Murchiston. It gets me!”

Mr. Cameron laughed; but he sighed thereafter, too. “Our little Helen is growing up, I expect. She’s taken a long stride ahead of you, Tommy, while you’ve been asleep.”

“Huh! I’m just as old as she is,” growled Tom. “But I don’t feel grown up.”

And here was Ruth Fielding holding the same attitude toward him that his twin did! Tom did not like it a bit. He was a manly fellow and had always observed a protective air with Ruth and his sister. And, all of a sudden, they had become young ladies while he was still a boy.

“I wish Nell would come back with my duds,” he grumbled. “I have a good mind to walk home in these things of the miller’s.”

“And be taken for an animated scarecrow on the way?” laughed Ruth. “Better ‘bide a wee,’ Tommy. Sister will get here with your rompers pretty soon. Have patience.”

“Now you talk just like Bobbins’ sister. Behave, will you?” complained Tom.

Ruth tripped out of the room to peep at the guest, and Aunt Alvirah hobbled in and, letting herself down into her low chair, with a groan of “Oh, my back! and oh, my bones!” smiled indulgently at Tom’s gloomy face.

“What is the matter, Mister Tom?” she asked. “Truly, you look as colicky as Amos Dodge-an’ they do say he lived on sour apples!”

Tom had to laugh at this; but it was rather a rueful laugh. “I don’t know what is coming over these girls-Ruth and my sister,” he said, “They’re beginning to put on airs like grown ladies. Cracky! they used to be some fun.”

“Growin’ up, Mister Tom-growin’ up. So’s my pretty. I hate to see it, but ye can’t fool Natur’-no, sir! Natur’ says to these young things: ‘Advance!’ an’ they’ve jest got to march, I reckon,” and Aunt Alvirah sighed, too. Then her little, bird-like eyes twinkled suddenly and she chuckled. “Jest the same,” she added, in a whisper, “Ruth got out all her doll-babies the other day and played with ’em jest like she was ten years old.”

“Ho, ho!” cried Tom, his face clearing up. “I guess she’s only making believe to be grown up, after all!”

Helen came finally and they left Tom alone in the kitchen to change his clothes. Then the Camerons hurried away, for it was close to supper time. Both Helen and Tom were greatly interested in the moving picture actress; but she had fallen into a doze and they could not bid her good-bye.

“But I’m going to run down in the morning to see how she is,” Tom announced. “I’ll see her before she goes away. She’s a plucky one, all right!”

“Humph!” thought Ruth, when the automobile had gone, “Tom seems to have been wonderfully taken with that Miss Gray’s appearance.”

When Jabez Potter came in from the mill and found the strange girl in the best bed he was inclined to criticize. He was a tall, dusty, old man, for whom it seemed a hard task ever to speak pleasantly. Aunt Alvirah, when she was much put out with him, said he “croaked like a raven!”

“Gals, gals, gals!” he grumbled. “This house seems to be nigh full of ’em when you air to home, Niece Ruth.”

“And empty enough of young life, for a fac’, when my pretty is away,” put in Aunt Alvirah.

Ruth, not minding her Uncle Jabez’s strictures, went about setting the supper table with puckered lips, whistling softly. This last was an accomplishment she had picked up from Tom long ago.

“And whistling gals is the wüst of all!” snarled Jabez Potter, from the sink, where he had just taken his face out of the soapsuds bath he always gave it before sitting down to table. “I reckon ye ain’t forgot what I told ye:

“‘Whistlin’ gals an’ crowin’ hens
Always come to some bad ends!’”

“Now, Jabez!” remonstrated Aunt Alvirah.

But Ruth only laughed. “You’ve got it wrong, Uncle Jabez,” she declared. “There is another version of that old doggerel. It is:

“’Whistling girls and blatting sheep
Are the two best things a farmer can keep!’”

Then she went straight to him and, as his irritated face came out of the huck towel, she put both arms around his neck and kissed him on his grizzled cheek.

This sort of treatment always closed her Uncle Jabez’s lips for a time. There seemed no answer to be made to such an argument-and Ruth did love the crusty old man and was grateful to him.

When the miller had retired to his own chamber to count and recount the profits of the day, as he always did every evening, Aunt Alvirah complained more than usual of the old man’s niggardly ways.

“It’s gittin’ awful, Ruthie, when you ain’t to home. He’s ashamed to have me set so mean a table when you air here. For he does kinder care about what you think of him, my pretty, after all.”

“Oh, Aunt Alvirah! I thought he was cured of little ‘stingies.’”

“No, he ain’t! no, he ain’t!” cried the old lady, sitting down with a groan. “Oh, my back! and oh, my bones! I tell ye, my pretty, I have to steal out things a’tween meals to Ben sometimes, or that boy wouldn’t have half enough to eat. Jabez has had a new padlock put on the meat-house door, and I can’t git a slice of bacon without his knowin’ on it.”

“That is ridiculous!” exclaimed Ruth, who had less patience now than she once had for her great uncle’s penuriousness. She was positive that it was not necessary.

“Ree-dic’lous or not; it’s so,” Aunt Alvirah asserted. “Sometimes I feel like I was a burden on him myself.”

“You a burden, dear Aunt Alvirah!” cried Ruth, with tears in her eyes. “You would be a blessing, not a burden, in anybody’s house. Uncle Jabez was very fortunate indeed to get you to come here to the Red Mill.”

“I dunno-I dunno,” groaned the old lady. “Oh, my back! and oh, my bones! I’m a poor, rheumaticky creeter-and nobody but Jabez would have taken me out o’ the poorhouse an’ done for me as he has.”

“You mean, you have done for him!” cried Ruth, in some passion. “You have kept his house for him, and mended for him, and made a home for him, for years. And I doubt if he has ever thanked you-not once!”

“But I have thanked him, deary,” said Aunt Alvirah, sweetly. “And I do thank him, same as I do our Father in Heaven, ev’ry day of my life, for takin’ me away from that poorfarm an’ makin’ an independent woman of me a’gin. Oh, Jabez ain’t all bad. Fur from it, my pretty-fur from it!

“Now that you ain’t no more beholden to him for your eddication, an’ all, he is more pennyurious than ever-yes he is! For Jabez’s sake, I could almost wish you hadn’t got all that money you did, for gittin’ back the lady’s necklace. Spendin’ money breeds the itch for spendin’ more. Since you wrote him that you was goin’ to pay all your school bills, Jabez Potter is cured of the little itch of that kind he ever had.”

“Oh, Aunt Alvirah! Think of me-I am glad to be independent, too.”

“I know-I know, admitted Aunt Alvirah. But its hard on Jabez. He was givin you the best eddication he could-

“Grumblingly enough, I am sure!” interposed Ruth, with a pout. She could speak plainly to the little old woman, for Aunt Alvirah knew.

“Surely-surely,” agreed the old lady. “But it did him good, jest the same. Even if he only spent money on ye for fear of what the neighbors would say. Opening his pocket for your needs, my pretty, was makin’ a new man of Jabez.”

“Dear me!” exclaimed Ruth, thinking it rather hard. “You want me to be poor again, Aunt Alvirah.”

“Only for your uncle’s sake-only for his sake,” she reiterated.

“But he can do more for Mercy Curtis,” said Ruth. “He has helped her quite a little. He likes Mercy-better than he does me, I think.”

“But he don’t have to help Mercy no more,” put in Aunt Alvirah, quickly. “Haven’t you heard? Mercy’s mother has got a legacy from some distant relative and now there ain’t a soul on whom Jabez Potter thinks he’s got to spend money. It’s a terrible thing for Jabez-Meed an’ it is, my pretty.

“Changes-changes, all the time! We were going on quite smooth and pleasant for a fac’. And now-Oh, my back! and oh, my bones!” and thus groaningly Aunt Alvirah finished her quite unusual complaint, for with all her aches and pains she was naturally a cheerful body.