And that night, lying awake and thinking of the new life to come, Blue Bonnet found the thought of those promised letters strangely comforting. “It—it can’t seem so far then,” she told herself.
“Hurry, Benita!” Blue Bonnet urged, “I hear Uncle Joe coming.”
The old woman gave a finishing touch to the waist she was laying in place in the big trunk standing in the center of Blue Bonnet’s room. “Si, Señorita,” she said, “all is ready.”
She lifted the tray in place and closed down the lid, passing a hand admiringly over the surface of the trunk. “Señorita has the trunk of the Señora, is it not?”
“Yes,” Blue Bonnet answered gravely.
“I remember, as it were but yesterday, the coming of the Señora,” Benita said, “and the Señor calling ‘Benita! Oh, Benita! Here is your new mistress!’ She was but the young thing—that little Señora—not much older than you are now, Señorita mia, and with the face all bright and the eyes so expressive—like yours.”
“Eighteen,” Blue Bonnet said, thoughtfully, “and I’m fifteen.”
“It was I who unpacked the trunk—this and others, for there were many—and now I am packing it again for the going of the Señorita.” Benita’s voice was trembling. “And the Señorita goes to the home of her mother’s mother. Much would the Señora tell me of the home she had left, in those first days.”
Blue Bonnet came to put an arm about the old woman, who, since her mother’s death ten years before, had mothered and looked after her to the best of her ability. “I wish you were going too, Benita,” she said.