"You re awfully dear and good to me, Ollie," she said. "But I want you to see father. I want you to go and talk to him about this, and know him for yourself. I know I'm asking a hard thing of you, but, truly, I believe it's best. If _he_ says it's all right for me to marry you, I will if your family want me, of course," she added as an after thought. {10} "Ought n't I to speak to your mother?" hesitated Oliver. "Oh,--mother? Yes, I suppose she'd like it," said Ruth absent-mindedly. "Mother has views about getting married, Ollie. I dare say she'll want to tell you what they are. You must n't think they're my views, though." "I'd rather hear yours, Ruth." She flashed a look at him that opened for him the heavenly deeps that lie before the young and the loving, and he had a sudden vision of their life as a long sunlit road, winding uphill, winding down, but sunlit always--because looks like that illumine any dusk. "I'll tell you my views--some day," Ruth said softly. "But first--" "First I must talk to my father, your mother, your father." Oliver checked them off on his fingers. "Three of them. Seems to me that's a lot of {11} folks to consult about a thing that does n't really concern anybody but you and me!" II After the fashion of self-absorbed youth, Oliver had never noticed Mrs. Lannithorne especially. She had been to him simply a sallow little figure in the background of Ruth's vivid young life; some one to be spoken to very politely, but otherwise of no particular moment. If his marital negotiations did nothing else for him, they were at least opening his eyes to the significance of the personalities of older people. The things Ruth said about her mother had prepared him to find that lady querulous and difficult, but essentially negligible. Face to face with Mrs. Lannithorne, he had a very {12} different impression. She received him in the upstairs sitting-room to which her semi-invalid habits usually confined her. Wrapped in a white wool shawl and lying in a long Canton lounging-chair by a sunshiny window, she put out a chilly hand in greeting, and asked the young man to be seated. Oliver, scanning her countenance, received an unexpected impression of dignity. She was thin and nervous, with big dark eyes peering out of a pale, narrow face; she might be a woman with a grievance, but he apprehended something beyond mere fretfulness in the discontent of her expression. There was suffering and thought in her face, and even when the former is exaggerated and the latter erroneous, these are impressive things. "Mrs. Lannithorne, have you any objection to letting Ruth marry me?" {13} "Mr. Pickersgill, what are your qualifications for the care of a wife and family?"