Seeing the hesitation which yet remained in Ben’s earnest blue eyes, Mr. Danforth continued: “Now, Ben, I have given you my advice, and it’s only fair that you should give me yours. I think I shall want to hire you and your horse some day next week, and I will pay you fifty cents an hour, and for this morning’s time, too.”
“Jerry’s a fine horse to work, because he’s so steady, sir,” replied Ben, yielding by slow degrees. “But the Convalescings expect me at eleven o’clock.”
Jerry had turned, unheeded by Ben, into Berkeley Avenue and was jogging quite spiritedly in the direction of home.
“It is not ten o’clock yet,” said Mr. Danforth, taking out his watch. “You can help me an hour and then keep your engagement with the children. I wouldn’t have you disappoint them.”
“All right, sir,” Ben said, more cheerfully than he had yet spoken, although his face sobered again immediately as he added: “I’ll leave my bundle in the hut, then it will be ready any time I decide to start. Of course, I’d lots rather earn some money and stay at home. But it’s sorrowful-like, sir, to see your mother needing money so much.” Again Ben turned aside his face, and when Mr. Danforth kindly looked the other way, the boy drew his red-mittened hand across his eyes.
Any one who had been near the log-hut in the tall pine woods not far from Ben’s home that morning, would have seen a broad-shouldered man in a heavy winter overcoat and a slip of a boy in a tight blue reefer jacket sitting in the warm sunshine on the sheltered platform of the hut, very earnestly talking together and advising one another, while old Jerry, blanketed carefully, stood near by without being hitched, and overhead, dusky crows and gleaming bluejays chattered vigorously, a gray chickadee or a downy woodpecker occasionally putting in a word.
Mr. Ned Danforth had surprised and delighted his niece Elsa almost beyond bounds by appearing in Berkeley the evening before, and announcing that he should stay at least until Christmas, a whole week.
After his father, Judge Danforth, had died, and after the death of Elsa’s father a few months later, Mr. Ned Danforth had agreed with his stepmother that it was wise for her to close her New York home, and also that Berkeley was a good place for motherless and fatherless Elsa to live in. Some day, when his little niece should become a young lady, Mr. Danforth hoped to have her live with him. He had missed the child greatly, indeed, out of his New York life, and his flying visit to Berkeley of a few weeks ago—the first time he had seen Elsa since September—had caused him to wonder whether she was wholly happy in her life alone with Mrs. Danforth, although the child made no complaint.
It was particularly to set his mind at rest upon this point that he had told Elsa he would pay her fifty cents a week if she would write a four-page letter to him twice a week; for he felt that in these letters she would probably tell him freely just what he wanted to know. Before this, Elsa had written him once a week, and always a short letter, saying that grandmother was well and she was well; that school was pleasant because she liked her school-girl friends; that Berkeley was a pretty place and the weather was growing colder; that she missed him ever and ever so much, and was his affectionate little niece, Elsa.
But the first long letter he received had run thus: