“Take their turns at what?” said his uncle, looking up from his newspaper. “At putting on all manner of airs with themselves, when they have really done something contemptible, and then at being made to feel contemptible when perhaps they have done the best they could. It hurts either way, my boy, and it isn’t starting with your pieces in good range, let me tell you once more.”
“Well,” said Hal, growing a little uncomfortable again, “I wish I could get these figures into range, at all events. I believe there’s no battleground where things go quite so hard as they do on a fellow’s slate;” and plunging in again amid rules and examples, he thought little more of poor Tom or his woes, until he went to join him in the land of dreams.
CHAPTER II.
The golden shower that the old butternut sent down upon the queer roof outside the city, was the nearest approach to the real thing the house ever saw, for though it had had its day with very grand people, they had all died or moved away long ago, and left it to grow shabby and old-fashioned as it might, until at last the city had bought it for a very small sum, and established within its walls the few old people and strays that the authorities were bound to support. So now it was nothing more nor less than the city almshouse, and the strip of land running back from it to the road behind, was called the poor-farm, though it seemed rather as an odd sort of compliment to the paupers, (boarders they preferred to be called,) than as a statement of fact, for there was only room to raise such vegetables as were needed for daily use in the summer, and the potatoes and great yellow pumpkins that were stored away for winter-days.
But old Ben, who had the care of the garden, such as it was, was proud enough of his charge, and would have ruffled up in a moment at any one who dared to call it small.
Ben had seen better days himself, as well as the old house, and had kept many a rich man’s grounds and conservatories in hand; but after all, was not a garden a garden wherever it was, and had not the good Lord called himself a husbandman, and said that he walked in the garden of his spices?
So when Ben found himself sick and unable to stir from his little room, just as all the winter things were ready to be brought in, it fretted and troubled him terribly for a few days, but at last he grew quiet. They might wait, he said; he was waiting himself till the Husbandman should see fit to bring him in. He did not have to wait long; and when the matron saw that he was really gone, she seemed to hear the words he had repeated so many times ringing in her ears.
“Waiting! Dear, dear, and what else are we all doing? What are any of us doing here but to wait?” she had said to old Sue on the morning when they saw that harvest-time had come for Ben at last.