We were enthusiastic, not mere braggarts. And the years showed the wildest dreams were possible, though so much of it had to be made by human hands.
"Six years. It is a long while to wait, isn't it?" he continued musingly. "Then you will be——" studying me intently.
"I shall be twenty-one. Oh, Ben, please don't think of that," I entreated, for I could guess what was in his mind.
"It wouldn't be fair unless you cared very much. Then, I think, it would be hard to have your lover so far away and miss all the sweetness of courtship. You see, I should be so engrossed I shouldn't have time for society, and could not keep thinking of you. But I don't believe you are really in love, Ruth. We are more like brother and sister."
"That is it," I cried. "And I do not think I shall marry at all, and that is why all you Hayne boys will be so dear to me. For now you see father will need me. I do not suppose he can ever be quite well again, and he has come to depend on me for so many things. And I shall try to be very happy."
"You are a darling!" He caught my hand and kissed it. "And you see we can tell better then than now, I shall hope it will come about some way, for I shall never find any one I like as well as you."
"Why, I shall be almost an old maid then," with an hysterical sort of laugh, yet a pang for lost youth. Girls in the new countries married young. "And I may be queer——"
"You will never be anything but sweet to me, a dear little girl, but it is best that you should be quite free. If it was ten years and I came back I know I should love you, for I should feel then that I had the supreme right, that there was no one to dispute me."
Dear, brave, loyal Ben. Never girl or woman had a truer friend.
It was by Mr. Wight's advice that Ben went to a preparatory school that autumn, since he had fully decided on his course, and we had no regular systematic training for college then.