E-text prepared by David Clarke, Mary Meehan, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net/) Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 18777-h.htm or 18777-h.zip: (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/8/7/7/18777/18777-h/18777-h.htm) or (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/8/7/7/18777/18777-h.zip) RUTH ARNOLD Or, The Country Cousin by L. BYERLEY London The Religious Tract Society 56, Paternoster Row; 65, St. Paul's Churchyard and 164, Piccadilly Butler & Tanner, The Selwood Printing Works, Frome, and London. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. A Letter II. Talking it Over III. Ruth's Decision IV. The Journey V. Cousins VI. Stonegate VII. A Poor Relation VIII. Sea-side Pleasures IX. The Picnic X. Busyborough XI. School-girl Gossip XII. Julia's Humiliation XIII. Hard at Work XIV. An Adventure XV. Examination XVI. A Downward Step XVII. The Prize XVIII. So as by Fire XIX. Living it Down XX. Home Again RUTH ARNOLD; Or, The Country Cousin. CHAPTER I. A LETTER. School was over, and the holidays were beginning once more, summer holidays, with all their promise of pleasure for dwellers in the country. The scent of sweet new hay was borne on the afternoon breeze, and the broad sunlight lay on fields of waving corn which would soon be ready for the sickle, and on green meadows from which the hay was being carried. Ruth Arnold slowly wended her way home-wards along the hot dusty road, turned down a shady green lane, opened a little gate and walked up the garden path; and then, instead of running indoors as usual, she sat down in the little rose-covered porch and looked rather thoughtfully at the book in her hand. It was a new book, a prize which had been awarded her that afternoon; but she felt very little pride in it, for she had known all through the half-year that the prize would be hers unless she was very idle or lazy. Nor did she anticipate much pleasure in reading it, for it was only a new English grammar, and grammar was not a study in which she felt particularly interested at that moment. It was not often that Ruth sat down to think, for she was a merry lively girl; but this afternoon she felt rather discontented with her lot. The truth was that she had been at Miss Green's school, the only one in the village, ever since she was six years old; and now she had turned fourteen, and began to feel some contempt for the elementary catechisms which had been her only lesson-books, and which were certainly not calculated to make learning attractive or interesting. The mode of instruction at Miss Green's was the old-fashioned one of saying lessons by rote from the said catechisms, and when the pupils had reached the end of the book they had to begin again at the first chapter.