A PARTING OF WAYS
For a while Ben and Posey rode along almost in silence over the roads
beaten smooth and clean by the heavy shower, while the wayside ditches
were still noisy little rills, and the trees shook down showers of
raindrops with every passing breeze.
Posey, in spite of herself, could not help a sorrowful feeling of
discouragement at the failure of her first effort at home-finding. Not
so much for the refusal itself, though she felt that to live with such
a cheery old lady would be quite delightful, as the fear that other
attempts might be equally useless.
Ben, flicking his big bay horse softly with the tassel of his whip, was
evidently in a brown study. At last he turned to Posey, saying, “I’ve
been thinking what you had better do. I can’t take you home with me—as
I wish I could, for really I haven’t any home except as Uncle John
gives me one, and that’s forty miles from here and I don’t expect to
get there for a month or more; besides the house is so full that Aunt
Eunice hardly knows where to put us all as it is.”
“Oh, I didn’t expect you to make a home for me!” cried Posey.
“I’d like to. But last spring the man whose route it was on was sick,
so I went over into Farmdale for one trip, and there I saw such a nice
old lady, nicer if anything than the one we just stopped with. I guess
she took a fancy to me, for she wanted to know if I had a sister. Said
she wished she could find a real nice little girl to live with her, and
asked me if I knew of any one I thought would suit her. Now, Byfield’s
the next town, and Farmdale is only seven miles from there, and I
believe I’ll drive over there with you to-night and see her. Maybe I
can pick up some rags on the way, and I know Mr. Bruce won’t care when
I tell him about it.”
Posey at once agreed, and the faint anxiety that had begun to rise in
her mind as to what she would do when it came night was at once swept
away, for in Ben Pancost and his ability she had unlimited faith.
When they reached the straggling little railroad station of Byfield,
Ben said he must go to the store and take on what paper rags had been
gathered in since his last trip, and he left Posey to wait for him at
Byfield’s one small hotel while he did this.
It seemed to Posey that Ben was gone a long, long time, and when at
last he appeared it was with a very sober face. “I’m awful sorry,
Posey,” were his first words, “but when I got over to the store I found
a telegram there from Mr. Bruce to come to Cleveland as quick as I
could. He’s sent for me that way before and I know what it means. He’s
got an order for rags and hasn’t enough on hand to fill it. I just
looked at to-day’s market report in the paper and it gave paper rags as
‘heavy with a downward tendency,’ so I suppose Mr. Bruce is afraid of a
big drop and wants to get his off at once. I’ve agreed with a man here
to change horses till I come back. It’s four o’clock now and with a
fresh horse I can get to Cleveland by ten or eleven, then the rags can
be shipped in the morning, and a day’s delay may make a big difference
to Mr. Bruce.”
“I see,” murmured Posey.
“So you see why I can’t go with you to Farmdale, as I was going to.
But I’ll tell you how I’ve planned it. I’ve agreed with the landlady
for you to stay here all night, and there’s a stage runs to Farmdale
to-morrow that you can go over in. The worst of it is I don’t know the
nice old lady’s name or where she lives, for she wasn’t in her own home
when I saw her. But they called her ‘aunt’ at the place she was, so
they will be sure to know all about her, and I can tell you just where
that is. The village is built around the prettiest green you ever saw.
You go up on the west side till you come to a story-and-half white
house with green blinds, and big lilac bushes at the gate; there’s a
sign over the front door, ‘Millinery, and Dressmaking,’ so you can’t
miss the place.
“There were two ladies there, not young or really old, but sort o’
between like, you know. They were nice, too. Why, what do you think
one of them did? I had torn my coat on the wagon and she mended it
for me. Wasn’t that good? And I know they’ll be good to you. Just tell
them I sent you, and as soon as I come back I’ll come and see how you
are getting along. I’m awful sorry things have happened this way, but I
don’t see what else I can do.”
Ben had talked very fast, and as Posey listened she was conscious that
a lump was rising higher and higher in her throat. “It’s all right,
Ben,” Posey tried to speak with forced cheerfulness. “Only it seems as
though I’d known you always, and I don’t quite know what to do without
you,” and with all her effort her voice trailed off in a quiver.
“Why, that’s so,” Ben’s tone was emphatic. “It does seem as though we
had always known each other, don’t it?”
“And you’ve been _so_ good to me,” Posey continued. “I shall never
forget it, Ben, never! This has been the happiest day I ever knew.”
“Shucks!” exclaimed Ben, his own voice a trifle husky. “I haven’t done
anything but let you ride on the tin-cart; that wasn’t much, I’m sure.
Besides I’ve enjoyed it as much as you have.”
“Oh, but you have been good to me,” she repeated. “You came to me when
I hadn’t anybody in the whole world, and I was feeling so badly that I
almost wanted to die. Except my mamma nobody in all my life was ever so
good to me, not even dear Mr. Hagood, and I shall remember it always.”
“I wish I could have done more for you; and here—” slipping a couple of
silver dollars into her hand—“is a little money for your stage fare,
and anything else you may need. I’ve settled with the landlady for your
staying here to-night.”
“I sha’n’t take it, Ben,” Posey protested, as she tried to force the
money back. “You’ve paid for my dinner, and now for to-night, and you
have to work hard for your money. I sha’n’t take it, indeed I sha’n’t.
I can walk to Farmdale to-morrow as well as not.”
“Shucks!” retorted Ben more emphatically than before. “You won’t do
anything of the kind. Besides I’m going to adopt you for my sister, and
brothers ought to take care of their sisters. When I get a raise in my
salary I’ll send you to a fashionable boarding school. But I must be
off, only I feel dreadfully to leave you so.”
“Never mind,” said Posey bravely. “You said God took care of me to-day,
perhaps He will to-morrow.”
“That’s so,” answered Ben. “You and I’ll both ask Him, and I know He
will. And I’ll be around to Farmdale to see you by next week, sure;
so good-by till then.” And squeezing Posey’s hand till it would have
brought tears to her eyes had they not been there already, he hurried
away, while Posey stood at the window and watched the red cart, a
grotesque object, with its dangling fringe of old rubber boots, the
sacks of rags piled high on top and hiding from her view the driver, as
it went down the street and slowly lessened in the distance. Then she
turned away with a sigh, for Ben Pancost had passed beyond her sight.
With his going the brightness seemed to fade from the day. The fallen
leaves of a maple before the hotel drifted with a dreary little rustle
in the rising wind. The floor of the room was covered with oilcloth
on which her chair, whenever she moved it, made a mournful sound that
increased her sense of loneliness. The long dining-room looked empty
and forlorn when she answered the summons to supper and found herself
and a traveller out of temper, because he had missed his train, its
only occupants.
As the dusk deepened, Posey heard the merry voices of children in the
street, but she herself felt strangely old and unchildlike with a
burden of anxiety resting on her, and the memory of trouble and care
and perplexity rising like a cloud behind her. A kitten came capering
into the room; she coaxed it to her and tried to cuddle the ball of
fur in her arms, feeling even that companionship would be something;
but the kitten was of a roving nature and had rather have its own
frolicsome way than her tending. When the kerosene lamp was brought
in it smoked, and through the dingy chimney the big figured paper and
the cheap chromos on the wall looked more staring than before. Posey
during her years with Madam Sharpe had known a varied experience with
the parlors of cheap hotels and boarding-houses with their threadbare
carpets and shabby, broken-springed furniture, but she was sure that
she never saw so cheerless a room as that of the Byfield hotel.
No doubt after all Posey had been through in the last twenty-four
hours a reaction was sooner or later bound to come. So it was not
strange that she should suddenly have become conscious of being very,
very tired, as well as exceedingly sleepy, and before eight o’clock
she asked to be shown to her room, where she soon fell asleep with
Ben Pancost’s silver dollars clasped close in her hand against her
cheek. For those dollars stood to her not only as actual value, but as
kindliness and helpfulness, the sole friendship she had to rest on a
friend near and human, while that of God, whose care for the morrow she
had duly remembered to ask, seemed to her heavy little heart as far off
and mysterious.
When Posey woke the next morning after a long, dreamless sleep, she
started up as if expecting to hear Mrs. Hagood’s voice calling her, and
a dog she heard barking outside she thought for a moment was Rover.
But her unfamiliar surroundings quickly brought to her all that had
happened, and she lay back on her pillow with a feeling of surprise
that it should all be true. “I wonder what will happen to me to-day,
and where I shall be to-night?” she said to herself. “But Ben said he
knew God would take care of me,” and Ben’s faith became her confidence.
With morning, too, the world looked decidedly brighter than it had the
evening before; she had a good appetite for her breakfast, and when
the landlady who served the table in person explained that the table
waiter went away to a dance and hadn’t come back, and the cook was sick
that morning, and she had everything to do and didn’t know which way to
turn, Posey at once offered to help. “The stage doesn’t go for a long
time yet, and I’d just as soon wash the dishes as not,” and following
out into the kitchen she was soon plunged in a pan of foamy suds.
“You are good help,” was the landlady’s comment. “My husband’s dead and
I have the whole business to see to, and the profit isn’t much, but
I’ll give you a dollar a week to wash dishes if you’ll stay with me.”
Posey hesitated; work was what she wanted, but the landlady’s voice
had a sharp accent and there were fretty wrinkles between her eyes.
“I promised to go to an old lady in Farmdale,” she answered after a
moment, “but if I don’t get a place there I’ll come back to you.”
Posey had taken pains to shake and brush out the dust and all she could
of the disorder from her clothes. Before stage time she repacked the
contents of her bundle, and begging a newspaper and string made it
into a neat looking package, and when the stage started out it was a
tidy little figure that occupied a corner of the back seat. The ride
to Farmdale through the pleasant country roads was all too short for
Posey, who once more found herself among strangers, a solitary waif.