"Perhaps not. But all your taste and refinement will be in your way, and will unfit you." "You have not thought about this so much as I have, or you would not say so. Any fastidiousness I shall have to get rid of, and I shall be better without; but any true refinement I am sure I shall find of use; for don't you think that every power we have may be made to help us in any right work, whatever that is? Would you not rather be nursed by a person who spoke gently and moved quietly about than by a loud bustling woman?" "Yes, to be sure; but a person unfit for anything else may move quietly, and speak gently, and give medicine when the doctor orders it, and keep awake at night; and those are the best qualities I ever heard of in a sick nurse." Ruth was quite silent for some time. At last she said: "At any rate it is work, and as such I am thankful for it. You cannot discourage me--and perhaps you know too little of what my life has been--how set apart in idleness I have been--to sympathise with me fully." "And I wanted you to come to see us--me in my new home. Walter and I had planned that we would persuade you to come to us very often" (she had planned, and Mr Farquhar had consented); "and now you will have to be fastened up in a sick-room." "I could not have come," said Ruth quickly. "Dear Jemima! it is like you to have thought of it--but I could not come to your house. It is not a thing to reason about. It is just feeling. But I do feel as if I could not go. Dear Jemima! if you are ill or sorrowful, and want me, I will come--" "So you would and must to any one, if you take up that calling." "But I should come to you, love, in quite a different way; I should go to you with my heart full of love--so full that I am afraid I should be too anxious." "I almost wish I were ill, that I might make you come at once." "And I am almost ashamed to think how I should like you to be in some position in which I could show you how well I remember that day--that terrible day in the school-room. God bless you for it, Jemima!" CHAPTER XXX The Forged Deed