"Jenny, let's go to walk this evening upon Beacon Hill. I have something to tell you."
They went out in the early twilight together, up the brow of the hill which the early settlers seem to have found a blackberry pasture, to the tree where they had gone with Uncle Benjamin on the showery, shining midsummer Sunday.
"Can you repeat what Uncle Benjamin said to us here, two years ago?" asked Ben.
"No; it was too long. You repeat it to me again and I will learn it."
"He said, 'More than wealth, or fame, or anything, is the power of the human heart, and that that power is developed in seeking the good of others.' Jenny, what did father say when he read the piece by Silence Dogood in the Courant?"
"He clapped his hand on his leather breeches so that they rattled; he did, Ben, and he exclaimed, 'That is a good one!' and he read the piece to mother, and she asked him who he supposed wrote it, and she shook her head, and he said, 'I wish that I knew.'"
"Would you like to know who wrote it, Jenny?"
"Yes. Do you know?"
"I wrote it. Jenny, you must not tell. I am writing another piece. James does not know. I tucked the manuscript under the door. I am going to put another one under the door at night."
"O Ben, Ben, you will be a great man yet, and I hope that I will live to see it. But why did you take the name of Silence Dogood?"