“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.