Rose could not understand it. Ben had been so interested in her behalf, he had left her so full of anxiety for her welfare, with such a positive promise of coming to see her. Nor could she doubt him. If ever she felt inclined to do so, the remembrance of all his kindness, of all he had been to her in the time of her sore need would come afresh to her mind. She had but to shut her eyes to see again the merry, sunburned face, with the straightforward, honest eyes, so full of sympathy, and to feel the tight clasp of his warm, brown hand as he slipped the silver dollars into it. One of these she had never spent and whenever she looked at it there came the certainty that Ben could not have failed her; something must have happened, and what that was she could not imagine. Rose seldom mentioned Ben to Mrs. Blossom or Silence, because they both inclined to the opinion that being but a boy some fresher interest had crowded the matter from his mind. But Mrs. Patience believed with her that he was not a boy to lightly break a promise, and that he would have come if he could.
“I wish more than ever that I could see Ben Pancost,” she confided to Mrs. Patience when her first check arrived, “for now I could pay him back the money he let me have. And Ben works hard for his money, and he may need it. If I knew where he was I would write and send it to him.”
“Oh, no, Rose!” Mrs. Patience’s sense of propriety was delicate and old-fashioned. “It would hardly be proper for a young girl to write to a boy.”
“But this would be different,” urged Rose. “It would be business, paying a debt.”
“That would make a difference,” admitted Mrs. Patience, “for a lady would not wish to rest under an obligation of that kind if she could avoid it. But then you do not know where he is.”
“No,” admitted Rose sadly, for brief as her acquaintance with Ben Pancost had been its circumstance had made it one of the most vivid memories of her life; and the day spent with him, as she looked back on it, seemed to her almost like a page out of fairyland, with Ben himself, warm-hearted, sympathetic, loyal Ben, with his happy self-confidence and happier confidence in God, as its knight and hero.
Then Rose’s face brightened. “For all that, I have a feeling that I shall meet Ben again, sometime.”
“He may be dead,” suggested Mrs. Patience, whose own bereavement sometimes gave a tinge of melancholy to her sweet nature.
“Then he has gone to heaven,” was Rose’s quick answer, “and if when I die I go there, too, I shall be sure to meet him.”
A few days later Rose came in with her arm full of school books. “Those are my books for next term,” as she spread them proudly on the table.