He would have been drowned but for Mr. Bellingham. I thought once they would both have been swept away by the current, it was so strong." "The river is none so deep, either," the old woman said, anxious to diminish as much as possible the obligation she was under to one who had offended her. "Some one else would have saved him, if this fine young spark had never been here. He's an orphan, and God watches over orphans, they say.
I'd rather it had been any one else as had picked him out, than one who comes into a poor body's house only to abuse it." "He did not come in only to abuse it," said Ruth gently. "He came with little Tom; he only said it was not quite so clean as it might be." "What! you're taking up the cry, are you? Wait till you are an old woman like me, crippled with rheumatiz, and a lad to see after like Tom, who is always in mud when he isn't in water; and his food and mine to scrape together (God knows we're often short, and do the best I can), and water to fetch up that steep brow. She stopped to cough; and Ruth judiciously changed the subject, and began to consult the old woman as to the wants of her grandson, in which consultation they were soon assisted by the medical man. When Ruth had made one or two arrangements with a neighbour whom she asked to procure the most necessary things, and had heard from the doctor that all would be right in a day or two, she began to quake at the recollection of the length of time she had spent at Nelly Brownson's, and to remember, with some affright, the strict watch kept by Mrs. Mason over her apprentices'
out-goings and in-comings on working-days. She hurried off to the shops, and tried to recall her wandering thoughts to the respective merits of pink and blue as a match to lilac, found she had lost her patterns, and went home with ill-chosen things, and in a fit of despair at her own stupidity. The truth was, that the afternoon's adventure filled her mind; only the figure of Tom (who was now safe and likely to do well) was receding into the background, and that of Mr. Bellingham becoming more prominent than it had been. His spirited and natural action of galloping into the water to save the child, was magnified by Ruth into the most heroic deed of daring;his interest about the boy was tender, thoughtful benevolence in her eyes, and his careless liberality of money was fine generosity; for she forgot that generosity implies some degree of self-denial. She was gratified, too, by the power of dispensing comfort he had entrusted to her, and was busy with Alnaschar visions of wise expenditure, when the necessity of opening Mrs. Mason's house-door summoned her back into actual present life, and the dread of an immediate scolding. For this time, however, she was spared; but spared for such a reason that she would have been thankful for some blame in preference to her impunity.