"This is great news indeed. But what proof do you bring of your good fortune, my son?" asked the level-headed Josiah, lifting his spectacles upon his forehead and giving his son a searching look.
Young Benjamin took from his pocket the letter of Sir William and laid it before his father. It indeed had the vice-royal seal of the province.
His father put down his spectacles from his forehead, and his wife Abiah drew up her chair beside him, and he read the letter to himself and then reviewed it aloud.
The letter told him what a wonderfully promising young man Benjamin was; how well he was adapted to become the printer of the province, and how he only needed a loan wherewith to begin business to make a fortune.
Josiah Franklin could not doubt the genuineness of the letter. He sat thinking, drumming on a soap shelf.
"But why, my boy, if you are so able and so much needed does not Governor Keith lend you the money himself?"
Ben sat silent. Not all the arts of the Socratic method could suggest any answer to this question.
"I am glad that you have an influential patron," said Josiah, "but to a man of hard sense it would seem very strange that he should not advance the money himself to help one so likely to become so useful to the province to begin business. People are seldom offered something for nothing in this world, and why this man has made himself your patron I can not see, even through my spectacles."
"He wishes, father, to make me a printer for the advancement of the province."
"Then why, my son, should not a governor of a rich province himself provide you with means to become a printer for the advancement of the province?"