Ben, though he saw the ludicrous side of the little girl's grief, kissed her as he had many a time before when she had been disturbed by similar things.
"Cheer up," he said; "it won't be so very long before I can give you ice-cream every day, and new dresses not made out of mother's old ones. Then you can walk up and down the sidewalk and tell Ada Green; or you can offer her some of your ice-cream,—heap coals of ice on her head."
He added more of this nonsense until the child's face brightened as she entered the house, clinging to his arm, and mounted the attic stairs to sit near him while he studied.
Ben's plans for the future were definite, and his hopes were not the mere self-confidence of youth. Fortunate in securing one of the state scholarships at the Institute, he had been told by his teachers that a high place in his profession, that of civil engineer, might be his ultimately. But "ultimately" meant a long time yet, and his sister was perhaps right in sighing that before he could give her ice-cream and similar delights, she would be too "grown up" to enjoy them.
When, therefore, he looked at his little sisters and thought of the probable narrowness of their lives unless he should interpose, he put aside any idle balancing of merits of his family as compared with that of Stuart Digby.
