"I'd a sight rather my little Ruth sat near me and let me place my hand on her hair. Your hair is jet-black, Ruthie--almost blue-black. So was your father's hair, my child. He was a very handsome boy. I never looked for it that he would die in the foreign parts and leave you to your grandmother and me. But you have been a rare blessing to us--a rare blessing." "Sometimes I think," said Ruth slowly, "that I have been a great care. It must have cost you a great deal to feed and clothe me." "No, no, child; far from that. You were always the bit of good luck--on the right side of the balance--always, always." Ruth took the old man's hand and pressed it between both her own. Presently she rubbed her cheeks softly against it. "Grandfather," she said, "are you all right now--quite wide awake, I mean? Has the dream about the shop and the wrong accounts passed out of your head?" "Why, yes, darling; of course it was only a dream." "Then I'd like to ask you something." "Ask away, my little Ruth. You are such a busy little maid now, what with your school, and what with your lessons, and what with that big scholarship--sixty pounds a year. Ah! we shall have a fine right side of the ledger when little Ruth has brought home sixty pounds a year." Ruth stifled a groan. "I am rather puzzled," she said, "and I want to put a question to you." "Yes, my darling; I am prepared to listen." "I know a girl," said Ruth after a pause--she thought that she would tell her story that way--"I know a girl at school, and she has been kindly treated. She is one of the foundation girls, but some of the girls who are not foundationers have singled her out and been specially good to her." "Eh, eh! Well, that's good of them," said old Mr. Craven. "They have been very good to her; but that Irish girl whom I told you about, she started a society--no special harm in itself--at least it didn't seem harm to the girl I have been telling you about, and she joined it. She joined it for a bit, and she liked it--that is, on the whole--but afterwards a girl who had not joined the society and did not belong to the foundationers, one whom I am sorry to say the foundationers did not care for at all, offered a great kindness to this girl--a very special and tremendous kindness--and the girl in her own mind decided that she would be doing wrong not to accept it. So she did accept it, and--Are you listening, grandfather?" "Indeed I am, little maid. Go on, my child; I'm attending to every word." "The girl decided to accept the kindness from the paying girl, and to do that she had to give up the society. She was sorry to give it up, but it seemed to her that it was the only right and honorable thing to do. She could not belong to both--to one side of the school and to the other; she must take her stand with one or the other; so she decided for her own special benefit to take her stand with the paying girls."