Another time Benny had placed eleven boxes on a board and was filling the twelfth when Ivan deftly caught up the board and disappeared with it; so when Benny turned around it was nowhere to be seen.
“Where are my berries?” he exclaimed, but there seemed to be no one who had seen the berries disappear, and Benny, cheated a second time, felt as if he could cry. There was such a woe-begone look on his face that Mr. Bentley noticed it when he next came up.
“What’s the matter, boy?” he said. “Want to go home?” And Benny, in the fullness of his heart, told him what was wrong.
“Sho!” he returned. “That’s a shame. Still we’ve no proof as to who took them. You’ll have to watch sharp. This is a pretty mean gang I have here this year. I had to take what I could get. Don’t you want to go over to the store for me instead of picking this afternoon? I haven’t anyone I can spare to send, and my wife wants the mail, and two or three things I forgot to get when I was over last. She hauled me over the coals for forgetting. I’ll give you just the same as if you were picking, and I think I can trust you not to waste your time.”
Benny’s face brightened, and after receiving his instructions he started off heartily glad for the business which took him again to kind Mr. Welch’s.
His way led through the pines a short distance, then through another piece of woods, and over the shell road till he came to the cross roads.
Little Jennie was the first to spy him as he came up. “Hallo, Ben,” she said. “Aren’t you going to stay at Mr. Bentley’s?”
“Oh, yes; but he sent me over for the mail, and for some things Mrs. Bentley wanted.”
“I hoped you’d stay. Father has a letter for you; it came down on the boat with a bundle of clothes your mother sent.”
Benny hurried into the store to hear what Mr. Welch had to say, and to receive his package. At sight of his mother’s little letter he felt a great longing to see her. “Kitty is not very well. She misses you sadly,” wrote his mother. “I’m glad my boy is trying to help me, but I shall be even more glad to see him again.”