“I should think so,” said Ruth. “However, it’s no matter.” And so, full of talk of pleasure, they chatted half the night, to the great annoyance of their next neighbor, (who chanced to be a crusty bachelor, who all but cursed “those girls,”) until they fell asleep, to continue their schemes in their dreams. “Oh, Ruth, dear, just stop and fasten my dress,” said Mrs. Castleton, looking out from her state-room in the morning, as her young friend was passing in a great hurry. “I am so late,” she continued. “Do help me pack up these things.” Ruth looked round in despair at the floor and chair, heaped with an indescribable mass of gowns, caps, shoes, and every thing that had been quickly out of the trunk, in Mrs. Castleton’s hasty search after a particular pair of _manchettes_, which were deemed indispensable to her toilette, because they just matched the pattern of her collar, and answered, “I’ll come back, Mrs. Castleton, as soon as I have fastened my own trunk. I left my room in a hurry, to speak to Harry, who wanted me, and half my things are out yet.” “Oh, you’ll have plenty of time,” urged Mrs. Castleton persuasively, but still pertinaciously, “and my husband will be so angry if I am late. He can’t scold _you_, you know,” she added, with one of those playful smiles Ruth usually thought so bewitching, but which she was in no mood to admire now, as she thought—“And so you mean to throw your unpunctuality on me”—but hardly knowing how to refuse, she was beginning to toss things in helter-skelter, venting her pet upon helpless frocks and caps, when Mary Randall coming by, saw her through the half opened door on her knees before the trunk, (for Mrs. Castleton was twining her long curls round her fingers at the glass,) said, “Can I help you, Ruth? I am all ready.” So, to her inexpressible relief, she took Ruth’s place, saying in a low voice, “Go and finish your own packing—I’ll get Mrs. Castleton ready.” “What a dear, good girl you are,” said Ruth, in a perfect effervescence of gratitude—for it is not always the magnitude of the favor, that produces the greatest amount of gratitude. “I declare, Grace,” she said afterward to Miss Fanshaw, “that Mary Randall is the nicest girl I know. I would rather have her with us than not.”