“Why, she looks like a lady,” thought the girl, with a new feeling of shyness coming over her, and she stole a glance around her for something which would enable her to decide her hosts’ real position. The appointments of the room, however, only mystified her the more. A plain, white board bookcase filled with old books stood on one side, with a gun resting in the corner, against it; two or three portraits of bewigged personages in dingy frames, and as many profile portraits in pastel hung on the walls, with a stained print or two, and a number of photographs of soldiers in uniform among them. A mahogany table with carved legs stood in the centre of the room, piled with books, and the chairs were a mixture of home-made split-bottomed ones and old-fashioned, straight-backed armchairs. “How curious these farmers are,” thought Ruth; but she did not have a great deal of time for reflection, for the next instant her hostess, who had been talking to her father, was asking if she would not “take her things off” in so pleasant a voice, that before hat and coat were removed all constraint was gone and Ruth found herself completely at home. Then her hostess excused herself and went out for a moment. Ruth took advantage of her absence to whisper to her father, with genuine enthusiasm, “Isn’t she pretty, father? What are they?” “I don’t know, but I suspect—” Just what it was that he suspected Ruth did not learn, for at that moment their host stepped in at the door, and laying his old worn hat on a table, made them another little speech, as if being under his roof required a new welcome. Major Welch began to apologize for running in on them so unceremoniously, but the farmer assured him that an apology was quite unnecessary, and that they were always glad to welcome travellers who came. “We are told to entertain strangers, you know; for thereby, they say, some have entertained angels unawares, and though we cannot exactly say that we have ever done this yet,” he added, with a twinkle in his eye, “we may be beginning it now—who knows?” He made Ruth a bow with an old-fashioned graciousness which set her to blushing. “What a beautiful nose he has, finer even than my father’s,” she thought. Just then the young hostess returned, and the next moment an old negro woman in a white kerchief stood in the door dropping courtesies as though she were in a play. Ruth was shown up a narrow little flight of stairs to a room so close under the sloping roof that it was only in the middle of it that she could stand upright. Everything, however, was spotlessly clean, and the white hangings, plain and simple as they were, and the little knick-knacks arranged about, made it dainty. The girl picked up one of the books idly. It was an old copy of “The Vicar of Wakefield.” As she replaced the book, she observed that where it lay it covered a patch.