On the day of Lina's great sorrow, Ben was standing in front of the boat-house, superintending a kettle of pitch that was boiling over a fire of dried logs and bark. The boat which had been almost torn to pieces on the night when Mabel Harrington so narrowly escaped a terrible death, was now turned upside down, and Ben was preparing to calk the bottom and repair the injuries it had received.
Lina saw him as she came down the avenue, and her pace quickened. The thin shawl she had flung about her was fluttering in the wind, but there was a fever in heart and brain, which rendered her insensible to the blast which swept the curls back from her burning forehead, and rustled through her light garments. The little Italian grey-hound, which had been for months her special pet, had followed her, unperceived, striving in vain to win some sign of attention from the distracted girl.
Lina flew down the bank, and Ben looked up as the sound of her footsteps warned him who it was that approached.
"I knowed that it was you, Miss Lina," he said, while every feature in his rough face softened, as he looked toward her. "Sakes alive! what brought ye out here such a day as this—this wind is enough to snap you right in two."
"I don't mind the cold, Ben; I wanted to talk to you."
"Wal, if there's any one thing Ben Benson kin do for you, you've only jest to mention it, and consider it done a'ready."
"I know it, Ben, and that is why I come. I wanted to ask you something."
"Why, you're shakin' worse nor a poplar leaf, and you're as white as if you hadn't a drop of blood in your precious little body. What on arth's the matter with you, Lina? See that ere dog; now, ain't he a pretty specimen of an animal exotic to be out of a hot house in such a wind as this."
Ben gathered the shivering little creature to his bosom with one hand, snugly enveloping him in the capacious folds of his pilot jacket, while with the other he seized Lina's hands, and leaning back against the boat, stood looking at her with a half-pitying, half-affectionate glance, that was indescribably comic and touching.
"I should like to know what Mister Ralph was a-thinkin' on, to let you come out alone sich a day as this."