Sanford watched her slight figure and care-worn face as she moved about the room—hardly a trace in them of the Betty of old. When Aunty Bell had gone down into the cellar, he called Betty to him and said in a low voice, “I have a message for you.”
She turned quickly, as if anticipating some unwelcome revelation.
“Mrs. Leroy told me to give you her love.”
Betty’s eyes filled. “Is that what she said, Mr. Sanford?”
“Every word, Betty, and she means it all.”
The girl stood fingering the handles of the knives she had just laid upon the cloth. After a pause, Sanford’s eyes still upon her face, she answered slowly, with a pathos that went straight home to his heart:—
“Tell her, please, sir, that I thank her so much, and that I never forget her. I am trying so hard—so hard—I promised her I would. You don’t know, Mr. Sanford,—nobody won’t never know how good she was to me. If I’d been her sister she couldn’t ’a’ done no more.”
It was but a slight glimpse of the girl’s real nature, but it settled for Sanford all the misgivings he had had. It sent a quiver through him, too, as his mind reverted to Kate’s own account of the interview. He was about to tell her of Mrs. Leroy’s expected arrival at Medford, and urge her to go over some Sunday, when Aunty Bell bustled in with a covered dish.
“Come, child,” she said, “sit right down alongside o’ Mr. Sanford an’ git your breakfas’. You ain’t eat a morsel yet.”
There were no seats of honor and no second table in this house, except for those who came late.