asked. "Doesn't it seem selfish for me to be the one to go?"

"Seem selfish? Whom to?" said Barbara, bluntly. "We weren't asked."

"I wish--everybody--knew that," said Ruth.

Making this little transparent speech, Ruth blushed once more. But she
went, after all. She said we pushed her out of the nest. She went out
into the wide, wonderful world, for the very first time in her life.

This is one of her letters:--

DEAR MOTHER AND GIRLS:--It is perfectly lovely here. I wish you could
sit where I do this morning, looking up the still river in the bright
light, with the tender purple haze on the far-off hills, and long,
low, shady Constitution Island lying so beautiful upon the water on
one side, and dark shaggy Cro' Nest looming up on the other. The
Parrott guns at the foundry, over on the headland opposite, are
trying,--as they are trying almost all the time,--against the face of
the high, old, desolate cliff; and the hurtling buzz of the shells
keeps a sort of slow, tremendous time-beat on the air.

I think I am almost more interested in Constitution Island than in any
other part of the place. I never knew until I came here that it was
the home of the Misses Warner; the place where Queechy came from, and
Dollars and Cents, and the Wide, Wide World. It seems so strange to
think that they sit there and write still, lovely stories while all
this parade and bustle and learning how to fight are going on close
beside and about them.