"I will be good," said Phronsie, sliding down from her mother"s lap, and folding her hands. "I will be good." She bobbed her yellow head. "And Aunty Whitney will get all well, because Polly is there."
Meanwhile the train bearing Mr. King and Ben was speeding swiftly on its way. For the first hour the old gentleman sat erect on his chair, gazing straight before him at the flying landscape, and with never a word for his companion. Then he suddenly turned with a little groan, and laid his hand on Ben"s shoulder. "You are such a comfort to me," he said brokenly.
"Am I?" said Ben, all the color rushing to his face. He a comfort to Grandpapa! He hadn"t gotten over wondering what had given him this honor of being allowed to go with him,--and now, to think of being a comfort!
"What I should have done without you, Ben, I cannot tell," Grandpapa was saying, his hand slipping down until it rested on Ben"s woollen glove, "but, oh, my boy, I am so glad I have you."
Ben said never a word; he couldn"t have spoken, it seemed to him, to save his life, but he lifted his blue eyes to the white, drawn face, and old Mr. King did not seem to feel anything lacking. And so, on and on; the revolutions of the wheels, the flashing in and out of strange cities, the long, steady, tireless plunge of the heavily laden express, by river and lake, hill-top and plain, only rang one refrain through every heart-throb, over and over, loud and clear above the reverberation of the train,--"What shall we find at our journey"s end?"
And when it was reached at nightfall, Grandpapa still had Ben"s fingers in his grasp; the valet rushed into the Pullman from another car, gathered up the luggage, and out all the pa.s.sengers poured from the train. There on the platform was Dr. Presbrey himself.
"It is not so bad as we feared," were his first words, as he reached Mr.
King"s side; and, without waiting for a word, for he saw the old gentleman was beyond it, he led the way to his carriage.
"Stop a bit," Grandpapa made out to say through white lips, "a telegram--tell them at home." He looked at Ben, but Dr. Presbrey sprang back into the station, wrote it, sent it off, and was with them once more; and then it was only a matter of moments and Jasper was reached, at the master"s house, where he had been carried after the fire.
"Don"t go in," said one of a crowd of boys, who surrounded Ben on the steps, old Mr. King being in advance, a medical man and one or two teachers coming out of the house to meet the party. "Don"t go in," he repeated, laying detaining hands on him; "it"s perfectly awful in there; everybody"s crying."
"He may want me," said Ben, hoa.r.s.ely, nodding toward the white-haired old gentleman ahead, and trying to free himself. The other boys closed in around him.
"Oh, Dr. Smith won"t let you get near him," volunteered one boy; "catch him!"--which proved to be true. Old Mr. King was just at the moment being ushered into the front parlor, and the medical man followed and closed the door with such a snap that it was impossible for any one else to even dream of entering.
"Now, what did I tell you?" said the boy, triumphantly.
"You"re Ben, aren"t you?" asked the first boy, who hadn"t relinquished his hold, the other boys drawing up.
"Yes," said Ben.
"Well, we"ve heard all about you, and the rest of you. King talked just whole packs about you all."
"Don"t," said Ben, and he put up his hand; everything seemed to turn suddenly dark.
"Hush up, Grayson, can"t you have some sense?" said a tall, dark-haired boy, angrily, and by a speedy movement he had rescued Ben from the first grasp. "Now, then, come over to my room," he pointed to a long building on the west, "and I"ll tell you all about it."
But Grayson had no mind to be so easily pushed off. "That"s no fair," he cried; "I had him first."
"No, sir, take your hands off, I"m--" and he clutched Ben again, determined to fight to the end for possession.
"That"s right. Get out, Tim," a dozen voices took it up in a subdued tone, it is true, but equally determined to see fair play.
And the tall, dark-haired boy, being shouldered off the steps, Ben soon found himself sitting down in the midst of Jasper"s school companions, Grayson still hanging like a leech to him.
"You see we can"t do anything but hang around here," one of the boys was saying, "and when anybody comes out, why, we hear a bit how he is."
"And to think it needn"t have happened only for Pip,--O dear!" said a stout, chubby-cheeked boy, who didn"t look as if he ever did anything but laugh and eat.
"Pip! He wasn"t worth saving, little rat," exploded Tim, who, being on the outskirts of the crowd, had to vent his vexation over somebody.
"You"d better let King hear you say that," cried a boy, with a belligerent glance over at Tim. Then, as he remembered how little prospect there might be of Jasper"s ever being troubled by the remark, he ground his teeth together to keep from saying more before Ben.
"See here, fellows." Grayson, having made first capture, deemed it his further duty to do the right thing by Ben. "We ought to tell him all about it. And I"ll begin," and without more ado, he started off.
Ben clasped his woollen gloves tightly together, and looked over the heads of the boys up to the sky. Was it possible that the stars had ever twinkled in friendly fashion at them, as Polly and the other children had run out of the little brown house with him at such fortunate times when their mother had let them sit up; and the moon had beamed down on them too, so sociably that Polly made up little stories about their shining light, so that they had all grown to love them very dearly. Now, it seemed as if great tears were dropping out of the sky, and Ben shivered and listened, and gripped his hands tighter together than ever.
"You see, it began--well, no one knows how it did begin," Grayson was rushing on; "I think Beggins was drunk."
"What stuff!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed another boy, contemptuously. "Beggins never got off the handle; the Doctor would have fired him long ago."
"There must always be a first time," said Grayson, nowise discomfited.
"Beggins is the night watchman," he explained to Ben. "Well, anyway,--hush up, fellows,--the fire broke out, we don"t any of us know how. It doesn"t signify. What we do know is that in about five minutes from the first alarm it got too hot for us in there." He hopped to his feet and pointed to the broken outline of a long building. Even in the dim light, Ben, dropping his gaze from the sky, could see the ruined chimney, the ragged side wall, and the blackened, crushed windows.
"And it was every one to save his skin. Great Scott! I"ll never forget that yell that Toddy sent up. He"s the teacher on our hall, Todd is,"
Grayson explained again, as he dropped into his seat beside Ben.
"Nor the bell clanging," put in another boy; "Christopher Columbus, I thought it was all day with us then!"
"And I couldn"t find my clothes!"
"Well, "twas no worse for you than for any of us," retorted the boy the other side of Grayson. "There wasn"t a rag for any of us to get into but blankets, and sheets, and--"
"You see we were waked up out of a sound sleep; it was about three o"clock this morning," Grayson took the words out of any mouth that might be intending to explain, "so we just vamosed the ranch. I tell you, there was some tall sprinting. And King was with us; I remember seeing him. But he was last, and he looked back; then somebody sang out, "Where"s Pip?""
"Pip?" Ben found his tongue, that had seemed to be glued to the roof of his mouth, enough for that one syllable.
"Oh, it isn"t his real name," said Grayson, in a hurry to explain again before any one else could put in a word; "his own was so ridiculously long,--Cornelius Leffingwell,--only think, for such a mite of a chap,--so we had to call him Pip, you see. Well, somebody was fool enough to scream out, "Where"s Pip?" and Jasper turned back."
Ben clenched both hands tightly together in a grip that would have hurt but for the woollen gloves.
"And I roared out, "Come along, King--""
"And so did I."
"And I." The voices took it up, one after another.
"For it wasn"t the time to look out for any skin but your own; it was as much as your life was worth to turn back," cried Grayson, bearing down on the other voices.
"Boys!" The big door back of them burst open suddenly, and a teacher"s head appeared, making them all jump as if shot. "Go right away from these steps!"
"How is he?" Nothing seemed to dash Grayson, and he took time to ask this quite comfortably, still holding to Ben, while the other boys moved off the steps and around the corner of the master"s house.
"Somewhat better. Be off with you!" The teacher waved his hand, and closed the door.
"That old Sterrett,--well, he"s a dragon," declared Grayson, between his teeth, and, dragging Ben to a convenient angle, where the other boys soon gathered, the narrative was taken up where it had been dropped.
"I grabbed King, but you might as soon try to hold an eel. He _would_ go."
Ben groaned, and this time so heavily that Grayson pulled himself up short. "See here, I won"t tell any more; you"re going to keel over."