"Yes, that's the man. He has procured a patent on a valuable invention of his, and is going to be a rich man by means of it. He's a much cleverer fellow than I thought. I heard him speak the other night before the Scientific Mechanics' Association, and it was a very intelligent speech, full of scientific knowledge, and showing a great deal of ability."
"And last year, father, you laughed at me for asking you if he had this ability."
Mr. Dering shook his head with a comic smile.
"Oh, well, Mary, we are all liable to mistakes. I've seen so much of this inventive ambition that came to nothing, I've grown to be cautious in my judgments."
"Of course he isn't running an engine now?"
"Bless you, no. He's off to Europe this month. He's made some contract with a firm in France for the use of his invention. They had heard of it through a former fellow-workman of Benham's,—another clever fellow, yet not a genius like Benham, though he has gained for himself quite an important position as an inspector of locomotives abroad; but there is an account of the whole thing in the morning's paper."
Dolly listened to this talk with a very divided attention. She had a big picnic on her mind, and all other matters were of very little importance beside that. It was thus that Ten-cents-a-bunch and the name of Benham were quite overborne for the time by this interest. After four years more of picnics and other pleasurings, Dolly heard the name again without the slightest recognition, and in the tall young girl of fifteen, with her womanly face and her hair wound into a knot at the back of her head, she received no suggestion of little Ten-cents-a-bunch.
And how was it with Hope? Hope remembered. The last four years of her life had been passed abroad, most of them in France, where she had been at school in Paris, while her father and mother were established near by,—her father taking advantage of the great opportunities Paris offered him for scientific study. It was a happy time for all of them, and in this happy time Hope forgot some earlier deprivations and discomforts, or at least forgot the smart of them; but she never forgot that encounter at the Brookside station, which was to her her first close experience of the world's class distinctions. Neither had she ever forgotten the face of "that girl;" and when, coming out of her room at Miss Marr's, she looked down the hall and saw those big black eyes and that confident expression, she at once, in spite of the change in Dolly's height and breadth, recognized her.
But the five years had matured and educated Hope so much that the thrill which accompanied this recognition was not that shrinking of fear and dislike which had once overcome her. It was now the ordinary pang of repulsion that one feels in meeting something or somebody connected with what was once painful; and there was an expression of this feeling in her face, as she entered the library downstairs. Two or three girls were already assembled there; and as Hope responded warmly to their affectionate greetings, one of them exclaimed,—
"There! now you look like yourself. When you came in, you had a stand-off sort of air, and a little hard pucker between your eyes, as if you were expecting to confront an army of enemies."