The Waterbury Democrat., 1935-09-14
SYNOPSIS


 RUTH WOODsON, 10 years old, an orphan, leaves Bro0klyn bg bus for Glle HnidsWest 10 look for . job. Unable aO pay her fare, she iS put OR the bus in the little town of Worthwhile, just as c storm is breaking. She seeks shelter in . huge old stone house with . blue door, and faints from hunger just as the door is opened by the old housekceper, BERTHA GIBBS, whom she later learns to call 'sPENNY."
 Ruth is carried upstairs by the old woman, assisted by JOHN MeNEILLb from next door. The hnif-blind old woman mistakes Ruth for ELAINE CHALMERS, wl1Dse grandfather built the house, and who is now at college h the east.
 Ruth ts ashamed of her de. ceptiOn and resolves to leave, but asrcse to stay longer when Penny tells her that tomorrow is her 5Sth birthday and pleads with Ruth to make . longer vlslt. Ruth has fallen I'm love with John McNeill and Is eager to stay. She IS not dtsmayed by the fact that old Bertha seems slightly ''0ff' on the subject of the blue door, which, for some mysterious reason she paints afresh "cvery quarter-moon."
 John is uneasy about the girl being alone in the house with the quere old woman hut Ruth assures him she Is not afraid. She says to him, "Pfease keep on worrying about me. I don't need 1t but like it."
 CHAPTER XIII
 After she had gone inside, John McNeill stood for a time before the dark, still house, wondering why he felt as if the heart and breath of him was locked up inside 1t.
 An immense stone building, across whose windows iron bars kept guard perpetually. This was the thing the man at the flower beds hated with a consuming hatred-his home.
 Along the graveled walks a party of visitors was being con- ducted by guard-men and women carrying open notebooks and ever-poised fountain pens or pencils. They asked questions and wrote down the guards answers avidly, consulting each other as they wrote, chattering, looking alertly around, sometimes laugh ing.
 Laughing! The man who bent over the fiower-ebd gritted his teeth in hatred of all the laughter on earth.
 As the party went on it's way and the jaws of the grim build- ing his hatred followed them. Yet the process did not ease his heart. There was more hatred there, and to spare, for the man who had pt.t him m this place.
 They called him MT. Smith. He was 6 trusty, and he was espe- cially good with flowers. They said he had been a botanist in his day. Sometimes John Smiths hatred hung suspended and impo- tent in the dark hcambers of his heart while he contemplated an opening flower, a budding plant, 8 seed, but it never went away entirely. He kept it there, ready to use against life and the people who had misused him. For Mr. Smith felt that his sentence to this place was wrong and an unjust thing. That, however, was about their incarceration, so in this particular MT. Smith was not outstanding. When he demanded justice no one listened.
 A plan was forming in Mir. Smiths head. As he worked the sol around purple chrysanthe- mum he thought the thing out.
 He would leave with the visitors when they went away.
 In an hour. perhaps two hours he could not be sure because of the tumult in his mind-he heard them coming. The same guard was with them, a man whom he did not know by name or sight. A man who perhaps did not know him. On this thread hung his first hope.
 As they circled the grounds. fol- lowing the graveled driveway and observing the Keep Off the Grass signs, they passed quite near the fower-beds. The visitors seemed in excellent spirits. Note books were still in evidence and fountain pens scratched spasmodi- cally. The guard was answering the questions of a pretty young