“Why, right here, of course, lad. Ain’t that what we’ve been telling you about? We’re counting on keeping you in the station, if it so be authority is given from headquarters, and it don’t seem as if there could be any objection. You can knock about pretty much as you please, though we count that you’ll help the cook, and keep the lamps and lanterns trimmed.”
“Fluff and I are to live right here?” Benny cried excitedly, in his excitement allowing the dog to drop to the floor, where the latter set up a shrill barking as if in approval of the plan.
“It looks as if you’d be glad to stay,” Sam Hardy said in a tone of satisfaction.
“Glad!” Benny exclaimed. “Why, you men can’t think how happy it will make Fluff and me! Of course we was ready to leave, and wouldn’t have said a word against it, because we’ve got our living to earn; but you’ve been so good to us that it seems as if you was our own folks, an’ we’d have been awful lonesome to go away where we didn’t know anybody. And you sha’n’t be sorry, either, if there’s anything we can do to pay our way, ’cause I know how to take care of the lamps, and wait on the table, and—and—and I can wash dishes just as well as a woman. I did it on the Amazonia all the voyage.”
“We’re allowing that this ’ere is a case where you regularly attend to your share of the duties,” Tom Downey said, speaking now in his official tone. “We don’t believe in making paupers out of boys, no matter whatever bad luck they’ve fallen into; but besides the work you’ll do, I reckon it will be kind of pleasant to have you and the dog laying round here,—makes it seem more like home. Now, Benny, you are to take hold from this out. Get up when the cook does; do what you can to help him; wash dishes and trim the lamps. After that the time will be pretty much your own, an’ if it so be that you can’t sleep here, why we’ll make a deal with Eph Hannaford’s folks so they’ll give you lodgings. But we won’t talk about that part of it. Turn to for breakfast now, and then there’ll be a chance to show how handy you are.”
The lump which came into Benny’s throat at the thought that he must leave the station had suddenly taken its departure, and in obedience to the keeper’s orders the lad took his seat at the breakfast table alone, for the crew had already broken their fast.
Tom Downey observed that the boy moved the chairs away from his immediate vicinity before sitting down, and it was apparent to all that, according to Master Fluff’s ideas, something had gone wrong, for the dog danced about excitedly, giving vent from time to time to a low yelp of what seemed to be disapproval.
“What’s the matter with Fluff C. Foster?” Sam Hardy asked.
“He’ll be all right after a spell,” Benny replied. “He’ll soon know the difference, ’cause I’ll make him understand it.”
“Understand what?”