Nobody's Rose

For a while Ben and Posey rode along almost in silence over the roads beaten smooth and clean by the heavy shower, while the wayside ditches were still noisy little rills, and the trees shook down showers of raindrops with every passing breeze.

Posey, in spite of herself, could not help a sorrowful feeling of discouragement at the failure of her first effort at home-finding. Not so much for the refusal itself, though she felt that to live with such a cheery old lady would be quite delightful, as the fear that other attempts might be equally useless.

Ben, flicking his big bay horse softly with the tassel of his whip, was evidently in a brown study. At last he turned to Posey, saying, “I’ve been thinking what you had better do. I can’t take you home with me—as I wish I could, for really I haven’t any home except as Uncle John gives me one, and that’s forty miles from here and I don’t expect to get there for a month or more; besides the house is so full that Aunt Eunice hardly knows where to put us all as it is.”

“Oh, I didn’t expect you to make a home for me!” cried Posey.

“I’d like to. But last spring the man whose route it was on was sick, so I went over into Farmdale for one trip, and there I saw such a nice old lady, nicer if anything than the one we just stopped with. I guess she took a fancy to me, for she wanted to know if I had a sister. Said she wished she could find a real nice little girl to live with her, and asked me if I knew of any one I thought would suit her. Now, Byfield’s the next town, and Farmdale is only seven miles from there, and I believe I’ll drive over there with you to-night and see her. Maybe I can pick up some rags on the way, and I know Mr. Bruce won’t care when I tell him about it.”

Posey at once agreed, and the faint anxiety that had begun to rise in her mind as to what she would do when it came night was at once swept away, for in Ben Pancost and his ability she had unlimited faith.

When they reached the straggling little railroad station of Byfield, Ben said he must go to the store and take on what paper rags had been gathered in since his last trip, and he left Posey to wait for him at Byfield’s one small hotel while he did this.

It seemed to Posey that Ben was gone a long, long time, and when at last he appeared it was with a very sober face. “I’m awful sorry, Posey,” were his first words, “but when I got over to the store I found a telegram there from Mr. Bruce to come to Cleveland as quick as I could. He’s sent for me that way before and I know what it means. He’s got an order for rags and hasn’t enough on hand to fill it. I just looked at to-day’s market report in the paper and it gave paper rags as ‘heavy with a downward tendency,’ so I suppose Mr. Bruce is afraid of a big drop and wants to get his off at once. I’ve agreed with a man here to change horses till I come back. It’s four o’clock now and with a fresh horse I can get to Cleveland by ten or eleven, then the rags can be shipped in the morning, and a day’s delay may make a big difference to Mr. Bruce.”

“I see,” murmured Posey.

“So you see why I can’t go with you to Farmdale, as I was going to. But I’ll tell you how I’ve planned it. I’ve agreed with the landlady for you to stay here all night, and there’s a stage runs to Farmdale to-morrow that you can go over in. The worst of it is I don’t know the nice old lady’s name or where she lives, for she wasn’t in her own home when I saw her. But they called her ‘aunt’ at the place she was, so they will be sure to know all about her, and I can tell you just where that is. The village is built around the prettiest green you ever saw. You go up on the west side till you come to a story-and-half white house with green blinds, and big lilac bushes at the gate; there’s a sign over the front door, ‘Millinery, and Dressmaking,’ so you can’t miss the place.

“There were two ladies there, not young or really old, but sort o’ between like, you know. They were nice, too. Why, what do you think one of them did? I had torn my coat on the wagon and she mended it for me. Wasn’t that good? And I know they’ll be good to you. Just tell them I sent you, and as soon as I come back I’ll come and see how you are getting along. I’m awful sorry things have happened this way, but I don’t see what else I can do.”

Ben had talked very fast, and as Posey listened she was conscious that a lump was rising higher and higher in her throat. “It’s all right, Ben,” Posey tried to speak with forced cheerfulness. “Only it seems as though I’d known you always, and I don’t quite know what to do without you,” and with all her effort her voice trailed off in a quiver.

“Why, that’s so,” Ben’s tone was emphatic. “It does seem as though we had always known each other, don’t it?”

“And you’ve been so good to me,” Posey continued. “I shall never forget it, Ben, never! This has been the happiest day I ever knew.”

“Shucks!” exclaimed Ben, his own voice a trifle husky. “I haven’t done anything but let you ride on the tin-cart; that wasn’t much, I’m sure. Besides I’ve enjoyed it as much as you have.”

“Oh, but you have been good to me,” she repeated. “You came to me when I hadn’t anybody in the whole world, and I was feeling so badly that I almost wanted to die. Except my mamma nobody in all my life was ever so good to me, not even dear Mr. Hagood, and I shall remember it always.”

“I wish I could have done more for you; and here—” slipping a couple of silver dollars into her hand—“is a little money for your stage fare, and anything else you may need. I’ve settled with the landlady for your staying here to-night.”

“I sha’n’t take it, Ben,” Posey protested, as she tried to force the money back. “You’ve paid for my dinner, and now for to-night, and you have to work hard for your money. I sha’n’t take it, indeed I sha’n’t. I can walk to Farmdale to-morrow as well as not.”

“Shucks!” retorted Ben more emphatically than before. “You won’t do anything of the kind. Besides I’m going to adopt you for my sister, and brothers ought to take care of their sisters. When I get a raise in my salary I’ll send you to a fashionable boarding school. But I must be off, only I feel dreadfully to leave you so.”

“Never mind,” said Posey bravely. “You said God took care of me to-day, perhaps He will to-morrow.”

“That’s so,” answered Ben. “You and I’ll both ask Him, and I know He will. And I’ll be around to Farmdale to see you by next week, sure; so good-by till then.” And squeezing Posey’s hand till it would have brought tears to her eyes had they not been there already, he hurried away, while Posey stood at the window and watched the red cart, a grotesque object, with its dangling fringe of old rubber boots, the sacks of rags piled high on top and hiding from her view the driver, as it went down the street and slowly lessened in the distance. Then she turned away with a sigh, for Ben Pancost had passed beyond her sight.

With his going the brightness seemed to fade from the day. The fallen leaves of a maple before the hotel drifted with a dreary little rustle in the rising wind. The floor of the room was covered with oilcloth on which her chair, whenever she moved it, made a mournful sound that increased her sense of loneliness. The long dining-room looked empty and forlorn when she answered the summons to supper and found herself and a traveller out of temper, because he had missed his train, its only occupants.

As the dusk deepened, Posey heard the merry voices of children in the street, but she herself felt strangely old and unchildlike with a burden of anxiety resting on her, and the memory of trouble and care and perplexity rising like a cloud behind her. A kitten came capering into the room; she coaxed it to her and tried to cuddle the ball of fur in her arms, feeling even that companionship would be something; but the kitten was of a roving nature and had rather have its own frolicsome way than her tending. When the kerosene lamp was brought in it smoked, and through the dingy chimney the big figured paper and the cheap chromos on the wall looked more staring than before. Posey during her years with Madam Sharpe had known a varied experience with the parlors of cheap hotels and boarding-houses with their threadbare carpets and shabby, broken-springed furniture, but she was sure that she never saw so cheerless a room as that of the Byfield hotel.

No doubt after all Posey had been through in the last twenty-four hours a reaction was sooner or later bound to come. So it was not strange that she should suddenly have become conscious of being very, very tired, as well as exceedingly sleepy, and before eight o’clock she asked to be shown to her room, where she soon fell asleep with Ben Pancost’s silver dollars clasped close in her hand against her cheek. For those dollars stood to her not only as actual value, but as kindliness and helpfulness, the sole friendship she had to rest on a friend near and human, while that of God, whose care for the morrow she had duly remembered to ask, seemed to her heavy little heart as far off and mysterious.

When Posey woke the next morning after a long, dreamless sleep, she started up as if expecting to hear Mrs. Hagood’s voice calling her, and a dog she heard barking outside she thought for a moment was Rover. But her unfamiliar surroundings quickly brought to her all that had happened, and she lay back on her pillow with a feeling of surprise that it should all be true. “I wonder what will happen to me to-day, and where I shall be to-night?” she said to herself. “But Ben said he knew God would take care of me,” and Ben’s faith became her confidence.

With morning, too, the world looked decidedly brighter than it had the evening before; she had a good appetite for her breakfast, and when the landlady who served the table in person explained that the table waiter went away to a dance and hadn’t come back, and the cook was sick that morning, and she had everything to do and didn’t know which way to turn, Posey at once offered to help. “The stage doesn’t go for a long time yet, and I’d just as soon wash the dishes as not,” and following out into the kitchen she was soon plunged in a pan of foamy suds.

“You are good help,” was the landlady’s comment. “My husband’s dead and I have the whole business to see to, and the profit isn’t much, but I’ll give you a dollar a week to wash dishes if you’ll stay with me.”

Posey hesitated; work was what she wanted, but the landlady’s voice had a sharp accent and there were fretty wrinkles between her eyes. “I promised to go to an old lady in Farmdale,” she answered after a moment, “but if I don’t get a place there I’ll come back to you.”

Posey had taken pains to shake and brush out the dust and all she could of the disorder from her clothes. Before stage time she repacked the contents of her bundle, and begging a newspaper and string made it into a neat looking package, and when the stage started out it was a tidy little figure that occupied a corner of the back seat. The ride to Farmdale through the pleasant country roads was all too short for Posey, who once more found herself among strangers, a solitary waif.