"There's one thing I want you to promise me," the girl's thoughts turned from herself to her old home. "I want you to promise to let me keep in touch with you. You're nearer than the folks down South. Promise that you won't go away without my knowing."
"Sure," he answered.
"And one thing more, if you hear from them at home that any one is ill, or that they're going to move, you must let me know. I mean to write to them before long, I'm going to settle a lot of things in my mind when school's over, but I rely on you to let me know the news."
"Yes."
"It's a promise?"
"Yes, Hertha, it's a promise."
She put her hand in his to say good-by. "You're my boy, you remember." There was a world of gentleness and love in her voice. "Do you know, I told Kathleen and then Dick that I had a brother, a little brother who was in school."
"I's feared you shouldn't have said that, Hertha."
"I had to have some relatives, didn't I? And I just naturally had you. And we'll never forget one another. And I tell you," looking with wet eyes back down the long aisle of the church to where the Bible lay on the reading-desk, "I know what heaven's going to be like. It isn't going to have any golden streets. Think how horrid and hard and glaring they'd be! It will have spreading trees and flowers, lilies and asphodels and green grass—yes, and white sand; and I engage you now to go out walking with me the first Sunday."
The tears were in his eyes as well as hers. "I'll love to be there waiting fer you, Sister," he answered.