Beulah dropped her work in her lap and gave a little scream of delight. “To think you should say that! And to think I forgot! Why, that is the one thing—just wait a minute.” She jumped up and ran around the side of the house. Presently, Benny heard her call, “Benny, Benny, come here!”
He followed the voice which led him to the door of an old building used as a sort of shop. In the doorway Beulah was standing. “Come here,” she said. “Do you think this will do?”
Was she fooling him? Was this a “make pretend”? His heart beat fast as he saw that she really did have her hand on something which looked like a wheel, and, as he came up, she rolled out a bicycle; not a very new one, but one in pretty good condition and just about the size for a boy of his inches.
“Look here,” she said, “I believe this is just big enough for you. My uncle gave it to my brother two or three years ago. Charlie has outgrown it, for he has grown so tall. Now he is at my uncle’s in the city where he is going to school, and when he went away he said: ‘Sis, you can have my old wheel; maybe somebody will buy it and you can have what it will bring.’ But nobody about here has wanted it, so it is on my hands. Now, please, please, won’t you take it? I’d be so glad if you would.”
“Really?” he said. “Honest, do you want me to have it?”
“Honest, I do. I’d rather you would have it than anyone in the world. Just try it and see how it goes. It had the tires blown up not so very long ago, so I reckon that will not need to be done right away.”
Benny mounted—what boy does not know how to ride a wheel?—and rode around the house once or twice. “She goes like a breeze,” he said, his face shining.
“Then she’s yours.”
Benny looked at Beulah. She held against her lips the ring which she had slipped on her finger. “If you love that ring half as much as I do this wheel,” he said, presently, “you’re mighty fond of it.”
Beulah laughed. The soft color flushed up into her cheeks again. She gave his shoulder a gentle pressure. “I do,” she told him, “and more.”