The old gentleman’s voice trembled, he dashed a tear from his eye and went on. “We raised eleven children, they all grew to man’s and woman’s estate, the girls have married well, the four boys are all well-to-do farmers and prospering. There are nineteen farmers and farmers’ wives without counting their children, and not a miserable idle “shack” among them; all of whom sprang by the father’s side from that poor boy who was the poorest of the poor, and worked his passage to this country, but found in a strange land friends to guide him. So you see what good may come from a friendless boy, if he is well-minded and helped.”
“You know, husband, the children have a long distance to go in the winter to school, and a boy like that would be a great help about the barn and to cut firewood, or go into the woods with you. The clothing of him would not be much, for I could make both the cloth and the clothes, and as for his living, what is one more spoon in the platter? And in regard to the money for his passage you know we haven’t built any new house, and so you won’t need to borrow the money.”
“Wife, if you want to take that boy, I’ll start off to-morrow morning and get him.”
“I want you to do just as you think best in regard to taking anybody, either boy or man. We are only talking the matter over in all its bearings, and as you brought up the disadvantages and risks, your father and myself were bringing up something to balance them; it is not a very easy matter to decide, at any rate.”
“But father,” cried Peter, “Bertie and Maria and I want you to take him.”
“Why do you want me to take him?”
“‘Cause we want him to come here and grow up to be a great, smart, good man, just like our great-grandfather—and as grandfather says he will.”
“And we want to help about it and befriend him,” put in Bertie.
“And me, too,” cried Maria; “I want to befriend him.”
“No, Peter, I didn’t say he would become a good man, because no one knows that but a higher Power. I said that to my certain knowledge one boy did, and that ought to be an encouragement to people to put other boys in the way of making something.”