Perhaps in all the city that summer there was no other person
whose daily life was so little changed as hers. Others were driven away
by the heat, by temporary weariness, by the need of a vacation and change
of scene. Some charities and some clubs and schools were temporarily
suspended; other charities, befitting the name, were more active, the
very young children were most looked after, and the Good Samaritans of
the Fresh-Air Funds went about everywhere full of this new enthusiasm of
humanity. But the occupation of Ruth Leigh remained always the same,
in a faithful pertinacity that nothing could wholly discourage, in a
routine that no projects could kindle into much enthusiasm. Day after
day she went about among the sick and the poor, relieving and counseling
individuals, and tiring herself out in that personal service, and more
and more conscious, when she had time, at night, for instance, to think,
of the monstrous injustice somewhere, and at times in a mood of fierce
revolt against the social order that made all this misery possible and
hopeless.
Yet a great change had come into her life--the greatest that can come to
any man or woman in the natural order. She loved and she was loved.
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