Ruth made no reply, standing there as quietly as she could, waiting while her grandfather scanned a letter. "Yes, this is the one," he finally said. "You tell him--" She had the letter and was starting for the stairs while listening to what she was to tell, considering at the same time how she'd take the short cut across the high-school ball park--she could make it all right by half past six. Feeling kindly toward her grandfather because it was going to be all right, after all, she called back brightly: "Yes, grandfather, I'll get it to him; I'll run right over there with it first thing." "Oh, look here, Ruth!" he cried, hobbling out to the hall. "Don't do that! I want you to go in the evening. He'll not be home till eight o'clock. He's going--" "Yes, grandfather," she called from the head of the stairs in a peculiarly quiet voice. "I see. It's all right." Then she could not find the things she wanted to put on. There was a button off her dress and her thread broke in sewing it. She was holding herself very tight when her mother came leisurely into the room and stood there commenting on the way Ruth's hair was done, on the untidiness of her dressing-table, mildly reproving her for a growing carelessness. Then she wandered along about something Ruth was to tell Edith's mother. Ruth, her trembling fingers tangling her thread, was thinking that she was always to tell somebody something somebody else had said, take something from one person to another. The way people were all held together in trivial things, that thin, seemingly purposeless web lightly holding them together was eternally throwing threads around her, keeping her from the one thing that counted. "There!" escaped from her at last, breaking the thread and throwing the dress over her head. Her mother sauntered over to fasten it for her, pausing to note how the dress was wearing out, speaking of the new one Ruth must have soon, and who should make it. "Oh, I'm in a _hurry_, mother!" Ruth finally cried when her mother stopped to consider how the dress would have had more style if, instead of buttoning down the back, it had fastened under that fold. "Really, my dear," Mrs. Holland remonstrated, jerking the dress straight with a touch of vexation, "I must say that you are getting positively peevish!" As Ruth did not reply, and the mother could feel her body tightening, she went on, with a loving little pat as she fastened the dress over the hip, "And you used to be the most sweet-tempered girl ever lived." Still Ruth made no answer. "Your father was saying the other night that he was sure you couldn't be feeling well. You never used to be a bit irritable, he said, and you nearly snapped his head off when he wanted--just to save you--to drive you over to Harriett's." Though the dress was all fastened now, Ruth did not turn toward her mother. Mrs. Holland added gently: "Now that wasn't reasonable, was it?"