"Oh, thank you, Uncle Jabez!" cried Ruth, feeling as though something very strange indeed must have happened to the miller to make him so agreeable. And she tried to be chatty and pleasant with him for the rest of the way home. But Uncle Jabez was short on conversation--he seemed to have hoarded that up, too, and was unable to get at his stores of small-talk. Most of his observations were mere grunts and nods, and that evening he was just as glum and silent as ever over his money and accounts. Miss 'Cretia Lock arrived early on Monday morning and when Ruth came home from school in the afternoon the wonderful dress was cut out. They made it in two days and Aunt Alvirah washed and starched and ironed it herself and it was ready for appearance on the last Friday afternoon of the term, when the district school held its graduating exercises. CHAPTER XXII MERCY Ruth felt that she was not very successful at Miss Cramp's school. Not that she had fallen behind in her studies, or failed to please her kind instructor; but among the pupils of the upper grade she was all but unconsidered. Perhaps, had time been given her, Ruth might have won her way with some of the fairer-minded girls; but in the few short weeks she had been in the district she had only managed to make enemies among the members of her own class. There was probably no girl in the graduating class, from Julia Semple and Rosa Ball, down the line, who was not glad that the girl from the Red Mill--a charity child!--was not numbered in the regular class and had no part in the graduating exercises. Nevertheless, Ruth proposed, if it were possible, to enter the Cheslow High School in the fall, and to that end she was determined to work at her books--with Miss Cramp's help--all summer. When it came to the last day, however, and it was known that Ruth would not come back to that school again in the autumn, the smaller girls gathered about her and were really sorry that she was to go. Forced out of any part with her own grade of pupils, Ruth had taken the little ones about her and played and taught them games, had told them stories on rainy days, and otherwise endeared herself to them. And now the little folk made much of her on this last day, bringing her flowers, and little presents, and clinging about her before the afternoon session began and their parents and friends came to listen to the exercises, in a way that was very pretty to behold. Aunt Alvirah wanted to come to the closing exercises of the school; but to expect Uncle Jabez to leave the mill in business hours for any such thing as that was altogether ridiculous to contemplate. Uncle Jabez had, however, paid some small attention to Ruth in her new dress. Before she started for school that last day she went to the mill door and showed herself to the miller.