THE PRODIGAL'S RETURN.
On Sunday evening, Ben, in company with his sister, her husband, and Charles, attended a sacred concert in Steinway Hall. As he stepped within the vestibule, he saw two street boys outside, whom he knew well. Their attire was very similar to that which he had himself worn until the day before. They looked at Ben, but never thought of identifying him with the baggage-smasher with whom they had often bunked together.
"See what it is," thought Ben, "to be well dressed and have fashionable friends."
As he sat in a reserved seat but a little distance from the platform, surrounded by well-dressed people, he was sometimes tempted to doubt whether he was the same boy who a few days before was wandering about the streets, a friendless outcast. The change was so complete and wonderful that he seemed to himself a new boy. But he enjoyed the change. It seemed a good deal pleasanter resting in the luxurious bedchamber, which he shared with Charles at his sister's house, than the chance accommodations to which he had been accustomed.
On Monday he started for Philadelphia, on his journey home.
We will precede him.
Mrs. Brandon sat in an arm-chair before the fire, knitting. She was not old, but care and sorrow had threaded her dark hair with silver, and on her brow there were traces of a sorrow patiently borne, but none the less deeply felt. She had never recovered from the loss of her son. Her daughter Mary had inherited something of her father's self-contained, undemonstrative manner; but Ben had been impulsive and affectionate, and had always been very near his mother's heart. To feel that he had passed from her sight was a great sorrow; but it was a greater still not to know where he was. He might be suffering pain or privation; he might have fallen into bad and vicious habits for aught she knew. It would have been a relief, though a sad one, to know that he was dead. But nothing whatever had been heard of him since the letter of which the reader is already aware.
Since Mary's marriage Mrs. Brandon had been very much alone. Her husband was so taciturn and reserved that he was not much company for her; so she was left very much to her own thoughts, and these dwelt often upon Ben, though six years had elapsed since he left home.
"If I could see him once more," she often said to herself, "I could die in peace."
So Mrs. Brandon was busily thinking of Ben on that Monday afternoon, as she sat knitting before the fire; little thinking that God had heard her prayer, and that the son whom she so longed to see was close at hand. He was even then coming up the gravelled walk that led to the house.