Worth his while

by Amy Ella Blanchard

It was very pleasant to be awakened in the morning by the song of birds, and Benny felt inclined to lie still and listen to them, but he suddenly remembered that he was not there as a picker, and could not be quite so independent in the matter of hours and minutes. He must get up and go down to help Mrs. Bentley. Therefore he jumped up and quickly dressed himself, and had the fire made before Mrs. Bentley appeared. She smiled her satisfaction. It was something, after all, to have a small willing boy in place of a lazy, shiftless woman, and she hardly regretted her slovenly and incompetent servant, although the work of getting breakfast was all her own.

Benny, however, tried to make it easy for her. He brought in water, fed the chickens, went to the dairy, and even set the table, with the help of little Jamie, who showed him where to get dishes and knives and forks. He had finished with satisfaction, for he had given a finishing touch by bringing in a bunch of wild roses he had discovered on his way to the spring, and these he had placed in a glass in the middle of the table.

“Do you like flowers, Benny?” Mrs. Bentley asked, as she saw his pride in the ornament.

“’Deed I do,” Benny replied.

“Then you shall work in my garden when you have helped me through the morning’s work. It has been sadly neglected of late, for we have been so short of help. I reckon pulling weeds will be as easy as picking strawberries, and you will be in the shade part of the time, which is more than you would be out there in the fields. Now, come sit down, and help us eat some of the strawberries you have helped to pick. We have some famous big ones this morning; unless you are tired of them,” she added.

Benny stoutly declared that he was not, and soberly said: “You know I didn’t get paid to eat them, but to pick them,” at which speech every one laughed. So, feeling a little bashful at that, Benny added: “Besides, there is no cream or sugar or biscuits to eat with them out there in the strawberry patch.” But this did not help matters any, for Mr. Bentley burst into a second laugh and told his wife she was very inconsiderate not to furnish these extras to the pickers.

But Mrs. Bentley, seeing the abashed look on Benny’s face, told him never to mind, that he had a good right to all he could eat, with cream or without, and that she was glad he was able to enjoy her biscuits.

It was a busy morning, the latter half of it spent among the flower beds. At first Benny was rather puzzled to know the difference between flowers and weeds, but here Jamie came to his rescue, for the little fellow had kept his eyes and his ears open, and being country bred, knew “pusley” from portulacca, and lamb’s quarter from China asters. The ill-smelling wormweed was easily enough found out, and after a while Ben grew to know the purslane, because it was so very pushing, and he understood what Mrs. Bentley meant when she said something was as “mean as pusley,” for it certainly did seem to crop up in every direction.

Jamie at last grew tired of playing gardener, and left Benny to himself. He worked away busily and saw his pile of weeds growing bigger and bigger, while the flower beds began to look much more orderly. He was smoothing the earth around a rosebush which had been disturbed by the too close shouldering of a big nettle, when he saw something under the green leaves of the bush he had pushed aside. He picked up the shining thing and brushed off the clay from a gold ring which had lain hidden, he did not know how long. He turned it over in his hand. It was a pretty ring with a row of blue stones in it, like little pieces of sky, Benny thought. He would like to take it home to Kitty. How pleased she would be. It was rather large for her little hand, to be sure, but she could keep it till she grew older.

But all at once came the thought. Why, it isn’t mine. Some one must have lost it, and will be glad to get it again. “I ought to have thought of that at first,” Benny muttered to himself. He wasted no time in running around to the kitchen, stopping on the way to give the ring a good washing at the pump. He carried it, looking very bright and shining in the palm of his hand, to Mrs. Bentley.