“Perhaps you’d rather I wouldn’t tell him about that place?”
“Tell him, if you want to; but I don’t believe you’ll get any thanks for it. He’ll think it’s some sort of a trap we’ve set for him.”
“How do you suppose he ever got into such a habit?”
“Partly disposition, partly habit. It’s a habit that grows, till after a while he will not trust any one. But don’t let’s talk of him when we can talk about the scheme. Beth, if it pans out, I’ll always think you were my fairy godmother.”
“I? Why, I haven’t done anything at all!”
“Yes, you have. You’ve shown me the way, just like the fairy godmother who pointed out the ring in the tree-trunk to Aladdin and told him to pull and a door would open that would lead down to the treasure-house.”
“That wasn’t a fairy godmother; it was a magician, an old Chinaman; so I don’t feel complimented.”
Ben did not reply. He was busily planning how to reach his treasure.
“I’ll have to have machinery and things; and at least one man to help me, I suppose,” he said. “I don’t know, exactly, what I’d better do first. But I can find out,” he added, with a rather blank look.
A few minutes before he had exulted in the fact that he was his own master, to negotiate the business and carry it on unaided; but already he found himself wishing for some friend of experience with whom he could consult. A few of the difficulties to be surmounted had dawned upon him.