CHAPTER XXV--UNCLE JABEZ IS CONVERTED

It was some months afterward. The growing town of Cheslow had long since developed the moving picture fever, and two very nice theatres had been built.

One evening in the largest of these theatres an old, gray-faced and grim-looking man sat beside a very happy, pretty girl and watched the running off of the seven-reel feature, "The Forty-Niners."

If the old man came in under duress and watched the first flashes on the screen with scorn, he soon forgot all his objections and sat forward in his seat to watch without blinking the scenes thrown, one after another, on the sheet.

It really was a wonderfully fine picture. And thrilling!

"Hi mighty!" ejaculated Uncle Jabez Potter, unwillingly enough and under his breath in the middle of the picture, "d'ye mean to say you done all that, Niece Ruth?"

"I helped," said Ruth, modestly.

"Why, it's as natcheral as the stepstun, I swan!" gasped the miller. "I can 'member hearin' many of the men that went out there in the airly days tell about what it was like. This is jest like they said it was. I don't see how ye did it--an' you was never born even, when them things was like that."

"Don't say that, Uncle Jabez," Ruth declared. "For I saw a little bit of the real thing. They write me that Freezeout Camp has taken on a new lease of life. Mr. Phelps says," and she blushed a little, but it was dark and nobody saw it, "that we are all going to make a lot of money out of the Freezeout Ledge."

But Uncle Jabez Potter was not listening. He was enthralled again in the picture of old days in the mining country. It seemed as though, at last, the old miller was converted to the belief that his grand-niece knew a deal more than he had given her credit for. To his mind, that she knew how to make money was the more important thing.

The final flash of the film reflected on the screen passed and Uncle Jabez and Ruth rose to go. It was dark in the theatre and the girl led the old man out by the hand. Somehow he clung to her hand more tightly than was usually his custom.

"'Tis a wonderful thing, Niece Ruth, I allow," he said when they came out into the lamplight of Cheslow's main street. "I--I dunno. You young folks seems ter have got clean ahead of us older ones. There's things that I ain't never hearn tell of, I guess."

Ruth Fielding laughed. "Why, Uncle Jabez," she said, "the world is just full of such a number of things that neither of us knows much about that that's what makes it worth living in."

"I dunno; I dunno," he muttered. "Guess you've got to know most of 'em now you've gone to that college."

"I am beginning to get a taste of some of them," she cried. "You know I have three more years to spend at Ardmore before I can take a degree."

"Huh! Wal, it don't re'lly seem as though knowin' so _much_ did a body any good in this world. I hev got along on what little they knocked inter my head at deestrict school. And I've made a livin' an' something more. But I never could write a movin' picture scenario, that's true. And if there's so much money in 'em----"

"Mr. Hammond writes me that he's sure there is going to be a lot of money in this one. The State rights are bringing the corporation in thousands. Of course, my share is comparatively small; but I feel already amply paid for my six weeks spent in Arizona."

This, however, is somewhat ahead of the story. Uncle Jabez' conversion was bound to be a slow process. When the party returned from the West the person gladdest to see Ruth Fielding was Aunt Alvirah.

The strong and vigorous girl was rather shocked to find the little old woman so feeble. She did not get around the kitchen or out of doors nearly as actively as had been her wont.

"Oh, my back! an' oh, my bones! Seems ter me, my pretty," she said, sinking into her rocking chair, "that things is sort o' slippin' away from me. I feel that I am a-growin' lazy."

"Lazy! You couldn't be lazy, Aunt Alvirah," laughed the girl of the Red Mill.

"Oh, yes; I 'spect I could," said Aunt Alvirah, nodding. "This here M'lissy your uncle's hired to help do the work, is a right capable girl. And she's made me lazy. If I undertake ter do a thing, she's there before me an' has got it done."

"You need to sit still and let others do the work now," Ruth urged.

"I dunno. What good am I to Jabez Potter? He didn't take me out o' the poorhouse fifteen year or more ago jest ter sit around here an' play lady. No, ma'am!"

"Oh, Aunty!"

"I dunno but I'd better be back there."

"You'd better not let Uncle Jabez hear you say so," Ruth cried. "Maybe I don't always know just how Uncle Jabez feels about me; but I know how he looks at _you_, Aunt Alvirah. Don't dare suggest leaving the Red Mill."

The little old woman looked at her steadily, and there were the scant tears of age in the furrows of her face.

"I shall be leavin' it some day soon, my pretty. 'Tis a beautiful place here--the Red Mill. But there is a Place Prepared. I'm on my way there, Ruthie. But, thanks be, I kin cling with one hand to the happy years here because of you, while my other hand's stretched out for the feel of a Hand that you can't see, my pretty. After all, Ruthie, no matter how we live, or what we do, our livin' is jest a preparation for our dyin'."

Nor was this lugubrious. Aunt Alvirah was no long-visaged, unhappy creature. The other girls loved to call on her. Helen was at the Red Mill this summer quite as much as ever. Jennie Stone and Rebecca Frayne both visited Ruth after their return from Freezeout Camp.

It was a cheerful and gay life they led. There much much chatter of the happenings at Freezeout, and of the work at the new gold mining camp. Min Peters' scrawly letters were read and re-read; her pertinent comments on all that went on were always worth reading and were sometimes actually funny.

* * * * *

"I wish you could see pop," she wrote once. "I mean Mr. Henry James Peters. If ever there was a big toad in a little puddle, it's him!

"He's got a hat so shiny that it dazzles you when he's out in the sun. It's awful uncomfortable for him to wear, I know. But he wouldn't give it up--nor the white vest and the dinky patent leather shoes he's got on right now--for all the gold you could name.

"And I'm getting as bad. I sit around in a flowery gown, and there's a girl come here to work in the hotel that's trimming my nails and fixing my hands up something scandalous. Man-curing, she calls it.

"But the fine clothes has made another man of pop; and I expect they'll improve yours truly a whole lot. When we get real used to them, sometime we'll come East and see you. I can pretty near trust pop already to go into a rumhole here without expecting to see him come out again orey-eyed.

"Not that he's shown any dispersition to drink again. He says his position is too important in the Freezeout Ledge Gold Mining Company for any foolishness. And I'll tell you right now, he's the only member of the company now that that Edie girl's gone home that ever is dressed up on the job. Mr. Phelps works like as though he'd been used to it all his life.

"Let me tell you. _His_ pop's been out here to see him. 'Looking over prospects' he called it. But you bet you it was to see what sort of a figure his son was cutting here among sure-enough men.

"I reckon the old gentleman was satisfied. I seen them riding over the hills together, as well as wandering about the diggings. One night while he was here we had a big dance--a regular hoe-down--in the big hall.

"This here big-bug father of Mr. Royal danced with me. What do you know about that? 'What do you think of my son?' says he to me while we was dancing.

"Says I: 'I think he's got almost as much sense as though he was borned and brought up in Arizona. And he knows a whole lot more than most of our boys does.' 'Why,' says he to me, 'you've got a lot of good sense yourself, ain't you?' I guess Mr. Royal had been cracking me up to his father at that.

"Mr. Phelps--the younger, I mean--takes dinner with us most every Sunday; and he treats me just as nice and polite as though I'd been used to having my hair done up and my hands man-cured all my life."

* * * * *

This letter arrived at the Red Mill on a day when Jennie and Rebecca were there, as well as Helen and her twin. There was more to Min Peters' long epistle; but as Jennie Stone said:

"That's enough to show how the wind is blowing. Why, I had no idea that Phelps boy would ever show such good sense as to 'shine up' to Min!"

"The dear girl!" sighed Ruth. "She has the making of a fine woman in her. I don't blame Royal Phelps for liking her."

"I imagine Edie took back a long tale of woe to her father and that he went out there to 'look over' Min more than he did gold prospects," Rebecca said, tartly. "Of course, she's awfully uncouth, and Royal Phelps is a gentleman----"

"Thus speaks the oracle!" exclaimed Helen, briskly. "Rebecca believes in putting signs on the young men of our best families who go into such regions: 'Beware the dog.'"

"Well, he is really nice," complained Rebecca, who could not easily be cured of snobbishness.

"I hope there are others," announced Tom, swinging idly in the hammock.

"Fishing for compliments, I declare," laughed Jennie, poking him.

"Why, he's des the cutest, nicest 'ittle sing," cooed his sister, rocking the big fellow in the hammock.

"It's been an awful task for you to bring him up, Nell," drawled Jennie. "But after all, I don't know but it's been worth while. He's almost human. If they'd drowned him when he was little and only raised you, I don't know but it would have been a calamity."

"Oh, cat's foot!" snapped Tom, rising from the hammock with a bound. "You girls mostly give me a woful pain. You're too biggity. Pretty soon there won't be any comfort living in the world with you 'advanced women.' The men will have to go off to another planet and start all over again.

"Who'll mend your socks and press your neckties?" laughed Ruth from her seat on the piazza railing.

"Thanks be! If there are no women the necessity for ties and socks will be done away with. And certain sure most of you college girls will never know how to do either."

"Hear him!" cried Jennie.

"Infamous!" gasped Rebecca.

"You wait, young man," laughed his sister. "I'll make you pay for that."

But Tom recovered his temper and grinned at them. Then he glanced up at Ruth.

"Come on down, Ruth, and take a walk, will you? Come off your perch."

The girl of the Red Mill laughed at him; but she did as he asked. "Come on, I'm game."

"No more walks," groaned Jennie. "I scarcely cast a shadow now I'm getting so thin. That saddle work in Arizona pulled me down till I'm scarcely bigger than a thread of cotton."

Ruth and Tom started off to go along the river road, the two who had first been friends in Cheslow and around the Red Mill. There was a smile on Ruth's lips; but Tom looked serious. Neither of them dreamed of the strenuous adventures the future held in store for them, as will be related in our next volume, entitled "Ruth Fielding in the Red Cross; or, Doing Her Bit for Uncle Sam."

The other young folks, remaining in the shaded farmyard, looked after them. Jennie jerked out:

"Mighty--nice--looking--couple, eh?"

Nobody made any rejoinder, but all three of Ruth's friends gazed after her and her companion.

The couple had halted on the bridge. They were talking earnestly, and Ruth rested one hand on the railing and turned to face the young man. His big brown hand covered hers, that lay on the rail. Ruth did not withdraw it.

"Mated!" drawled Jennie Stone, and the others nodded understandingly.

THE END

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RUTH FIELDING AND THE GYPSIES or The Missing Pearl Necklace

RUTH FIELDING IN MOVING PICTURES or Helping the Dormitory Fund

RUTH FIELDING DOWN IN DIXIE or Great Days in the Land of Cotton

RUTH FIELDING AT COLLEGE or The Missing Examination Papers

RUTH FIELDING IN THE SADDLE or College Girls in the Land of Gold

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6. BETTY GORDON AT OCEAN PARK or School Chums on the Boardwalk

A glorious outing that Betty and her chums never forgot.

7. BETTY GORDON AND HER SCHOOL CHUMS or Bringing the Rebels to Terms

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End of Project Gutenberg's Ruth Fielding In the Saddle, by Alice B. Emerson