"Go, of course, I'll go; and not because of that money either, nor yet to pleasure you. I'll go because Miriam needs me, if ever poor lass needed a friend to stay by her side. I'll stop at th' Burnplatts till all's over. Surely those outlandish Burnplatters will behave themselves like decent folk till th' funeral's over, though they do say an Irish Wakes isn't in it for whisky where a Burnplatts' funeral comes. I do hope that wild runagate Ephraim will give th' spot a wide berth while I'm there. But what at after? There's the rub, as that mad Hamlet said." "Why, bring her back with you to Pole Moor. Tell her you're worn out with nursing me and want rest. Tell her I'm going back-ards way for want of proper attention--oh, tell her any mak' o' a fairy-tale you like--only bring her." Ruth fetched me a smacking kiss on my forehead. "And bring her I will," she cried, "if I've to make Jim hug her here," and she tripped blithely out of the room and down the narrow staircase, singing like a thrush out of the lightness of her heart, and calling "Jim, Jim," in her clear, young voice. CHAPTER IX. A GREAT TEA-DRINKING. AND bring her she did: her and as tiny a kit of clothing as ever, I imagine, was borne even by the poorest emigrant leaving these shores for distant lands. Poor Miriam, she looked sadly abashed when first she set foot in our modest home. The Manse at Pole Moor, you may well believe, was not a palace, yet a palace it may well have seemed to one who all her young life had known nought but the dirty squalor of Burnplatts. And what a magician that saucy Ruth of ours proved herself in those early days of Miriam's coming. I would have you to understand that whereas my Miriam was slender and willowy of bodily build, Ruth was not so tall as she by a good two inches and of a comfortable and restful plumpness. Yet, before Miriam had been three days beneath my father's roof, behold her arrayed in one of Ruth's frocks that, to the male eye at least, appeared to fit her like a glove. Then her hair--her glorious, shiny, lustrous locks, dark as night, that ever since I had known my love had flowed at large about her neck and shoulders and twisted and twined about her bosom in a curling disarray--Ruth had tucked it up into a coiling knot that nestled snugly in the nape of the neck. I vow that when Ruth led Miriam thus transfigured into my room, her eyes downcast, the ready blush mantling her cheeks, I scarce knew her at first glance. With what a gentle grace the moved; how soft and sweet her speech; there was a self-possession and composure about her that are foreign to the girls one mostly meets on the hill-sides, with their hearty ways and quick, bustling movements.