"But where?" asked Cameron anxiously. "Are you sure it's respectable? I'm afraid there isn't any place there that would do at all."
"Oh, yes there is," said Ruth. "It's the Salvation Army 'Hut,' they called it, but it looks more like a barracks, and there's the dearest little woman in charge!"
"John, I'm afraid it isn't the right thing to let her do it!" put in his mother anxiously. "I'm afraid her aunt wouldn't like it at all, and I'm sure she won't be comfortable."
"I shall love it!" said Ruth happily, "and my aunt will never know anything about it. As for comfort, I'll be as comfortable as you are, my dear lady, and I'm sure you wouldn't let comfort stand in the way of being with your boy." She smiled her sweet little triumph that brought tears to the eyes of the mother; and Cameron gave her a blinding look of gratitude and adoration. So she carried her way.
Cameron protested no more, but quietly enquired at the Hostess' House if the place was all right, and when he put them on the car at eight o'clock he gave Ruth's hand a lingering pressure, and said in a low tone that only she could hear, with a look that carried its meaning to her heart: "I shall never forget that you did this for my mother--and me!"
The two felt almost light-hearted in comparison to their fellow travellers, because they had a short reprieve before they would have to say good-bye. But Ruth sat looking about her, at the sad-eyed girls and women who had just parted from their husbands and sons and sweethearts, and who were most of them weeping, and felt anew the great burden of the universal sorrow upon her. She wondered how God could stand it. The old human question that wonders how God can stand the great agonies of life that have to come to cure the world of its sin, and never wonders how God can stand the sin! She felt as if she must somehow find God and plead with Him not to do it, and again there came that longing to her soul, if she only knew God intimately! Cameron's question recurred to her thoughts, "Could anyone on this earth know God? Had anyone ever known Him? Would the Bible say anything about it?" She resolved to read it through and find out.
The brief ride brought them suddenly into a new and to Ruth somewhat startling environment.