Frederic called the little girl, who, childlike, waited to put on her bracelet, “so as to show the man that she still wore it and liked it very much.” She seemed greatly pleased at meeting Ben again, asking him why he had not been there before, and if he had received her picture.
“Yes, wee one,” said he, taking her round white arm in his hand and touching the bracelet. “I should have writ, only that ain’t in my line much, and I don’t always spell jest right, but we got the picter, and Marian was so pleased she cried.”
“What made her?” said Alice, wonderingly. “She don’t know me.”
“But she knows you’re blind, for I told her,” was Ben’s quick reply, which was quite satisfactory to Alice, who by this time had detected a note of sadness in his voice, and she asked what was the matter.
To her also Ben replied, “My mother’s dead,” and the mature little girl understood at once the dreary loneliness that a mother’s death must bring even to the heart of a big man like Ben. Immediately, too, she thought of Marian Grey, and asked “What she would do?”
“I come out to see if your pa—no, beg your pardon—to see if the Square didn’t want her to hear you say your lessons,” was Ben’s answer, and Alice exclaimed, “Oh, Frederic. Let her come. I know I shall like her better than Mrs. Jones, for she’s young and pretty, I am sure. May she come?”
“Alice,” said Frederic, “Mrs. Jones has an aged mother and two little children dependent upon her earnings, and, should I send her away, the disappointment would be very great. Next year, if we all live, Miss Grey shall come, and with this you must be satisfied.”
Alice saw at once that he was right, and she gave up the point, merely remarking that “a year was a heap of a while.”
“No, ’taint,” said Ben, who each moment was becoming more and more reconciled to the arrangement.
One year’s daily intercourse with fashionable people, he thought, would be of invaluable service to Marian, and as he wished her to be perfect both in looks and manners when he presented her to Frederic Raymond, he was well satisfied to wait, and he returned to New York with a light, hopeful heart. Marian, on the contrary, was slightly disappointed, for like Alice, a year seemed to her a long, long time. Still there was no alternative, and she wrote to Mrs. Sheldon that she would come as early as the first day of October. It was hard to break up their old home, but it was necessary, they knew, and with sad hearts they disposed of the furniture, gave up the rooms, and then, when the appointed time came, Marian started for her new home, accompanied by Ben, who went rather unwillingly.