Jim looked it over and read it through with undisguised astonishment.
"Did she gin it to ye?" he inquired.
"Yes."
"An' be ye a goin' to keep it?"
"Yes, I'm going to keep it."
Jim was evidently doubtful touching the delicacy both of tendering and receiving such a gift.
"If that thing had come to me from the little woman," said he, "I should think she was gittin' oneasy, an' a little dubersome about my comin' to time. It don't seem jest the thing for a woman to shell out money to a man. My nater goes agin it. I feel it all over me, an' I vow, I b'lieve that if the little woman had did that thing to me, I sh'd rub out my reckonin' an' start new."
"It's all right, though, Jim," responded Benedict, good-naturedly—"right for the woman to give it, and right for me to receive it. Don't trouble yourself at all about it."
Benedict's assurance did little to relieve Jim's bewilderment, who still thought it a very improper thing to receive money from a woman. He did not examine himself far enough to learn that Benedict's independence of his own care and provision was partly the cause of his pain. Five hundred dollars in the woods was a great deal of money. To Jim's apprehension, the man had become a capitalist. Some one beside himself—some one richer and more powerful than himself—had taken the position of benefactor toward his friend. He was glad to see Benedict happy, but sorry that he could not have been the agent in making him so.
"Well, I can't keep ye forever'n' ever, but I was a hopin' ye'd hang by till I git hold of the little woman," said Jim.