Betty paused a moment, twisting the little ring on her finger, and then repeated what she had confessed to Joyce, the afternoon that she thought she must be blind all the rest of her life.
"I wanted to build a road like that for godmother. Of course I couldn't dig one like those chiefs did, and she wouldn't have wanted it even if I could; but I thought maybe I could leave a memory behind me of my visit, that would be like a smooth white road. You know, remembering things is like looking back over a road. The unpleasant things that have happened are like the rocks we stumble over. But if we have done nothing unpleasant to remember, then we can look back and see it stretched out behind us, all smooth and white and shining.
"So, from the very first day of my visit, I tried to leave nothing behind me for her memory to stumble over. Not a frown or a cross word or a single disobedience. Nothing in all my life ever made me so happy as what she said to me the day I left Locust. I knew then that I had succeeded."
There was nothing preachy about Betty. She did not apply the story to her hearers, even in the tone in which she told it; but the silence that followed was uncomfortable to one squirming boy at least.
Bradley remembered the fishing-worms, and was in haste to change the subject. "Say, Betty, what are you going to do with Bob when you go away?"
"I have been trying for some time to make up my mind," said Betty. "First I thought I would take him back to Locust, and let him stay with his brothers; but I'll be away so long that he won't know me when I come back, and this afternoon I decided to give him to Davy."
"Oh, really, truly, Betty?" cried the child, tumbling forward at her feet in a quiver of delight, for he had loved the frolicsome puppy at first sight, and had kept it with him every waking moment since it came.
"Really, truly," she repeated, picking up the puppy and dropping him into Davy's arms. "There, sir! Go to your new master, you rascal, and remember that your name isn't Bob Lewis any longer. It is Bob Appleton now."
Davy squeezed the fat puppy so close in his arms that his beaming face was nearly hidden by the big bow of yellow ribbon. He had never been so happy in all his life. The road that Betty had left in her godmother's memory was not the only one that stretched out white and shining behind her. No matter how long she might be gone from the Cuckoo's Nest, or how the years might pile up between them, in Davy's heart she would be the dearest memory of his childhood. With Bob she had given him its crowning joy, a reminder of herself, to live and move and frisk beside him; to keep pace with every step, and to bring her to his loving remembrance with every wag of its stumpy tail, and every glance of its faithful brown eyes.