"Oh, no, he wasn't," protested Joel, terribly alarmed lest Ben should be blamed. "I was cross, Grandpapa. 'Twas all my fault." He was so distressed that the old gentleman hastened to add, "Yes, yes; well, there now, that's quite enough. As I've never seen Ben treat you one-half as badly as you deserve, sir, I'll believe you. Now be off with you, Joel!" and with a little laugh and another last pat he dismissed him.
Meantime Polly was having a perfectly dreadful time up in Ben's room. It took Mrs. Fisher as well as Ben to comfort her in the least for her dreadful disappointment that Ben was not going to accept a long and thorough education at Mr. King's hands.
But all this was as nothing to Grandpapa's dismay when the truth came out. And it took more than the combined efforts of the whole household to restore him to equanimity when he saw that Ben was actually not to be moved from his resolution. It was little Doctor Fisher who finally achieved the first bit of resignation reached.
"Now, my good sir;" the little man put himself, unasked, beside the stately figure pacing with ill-concealed irritation down the "long path." It was several days since Ben had made his announcement, and Grandpapa had been hoping against all obstacles that the boy would give in at the last. But to-day even that hope slipped away.
"Let me speak a word for Ben," the little Doctor went on, raising his big spectacles just as cheerfully to the clouded face as if a warm invitation had been extended him.
"Ben needs no words from you, Doctor Fisher," said Mr. King, icily; "I really consider the least said on this subject the better, perhaps."
"Perhaps—and perhaps not," said the little man, just as cheerily. It was impossible to quarrel with him or to shake him off, and Mr. King, realizing this, kept on his walk with long strides, Doctor Fisher skipping by his side, telling off the points of what he had come to say, on his nervous fingers.
"Do you realize," he said at length, "that you would break down all Ben's best powers if you had your way with him?"
"Hold on there, man," roared the old gentleman, coming to an abrupt pause in his walk, "do you mean to say, and do you take me for an idiot, which I should be if I believed it, that the more education a boy gets, the more he injures his chances for life?"
The little man squinted at the tips of the trees waving their skeleton branches in the crisp air, then brought a calm gaze to the excited old face: "Not exactly; but I do say when you make a boy like Ben turn from the path he has marked out for himself, all the education that culture would crowd on him is just so much to break down the boy. Ben wouldn't be Ben after you got through with him. Now be sensible." He got up on his tiptoes and actually bestowed a pat on the stately shoulder. "Ben wants to go to work. Give him his head,—you can trust him; and let's you and I keep our hands off from him."