Misery loves company. Those seven boys, from that day, had a peculiar tenderness for one another. They were linked by a hidden bond; and while they laughed heartily at their own expense, and tacitly confessed themselves beaten, they compelled all outsiders to be satisfied with guessing and with hints of the catastrophe that somehow came to light. Not one of them ever disclosed all the facts of the case,—the secret sessions, the frequent upset-practisings on cloudy evenings, the difficulty of the final performance, and the full sum of their defeat.
Ben, usually a kind brother, was sternness itself so far as the great race was concerned. Not one of the juvenile Danbys dared to allude to it in his august presence. Only on one occasion did he unbend, and that was when little Fandy ventured to observe that he ought to have heard what one of the girls had said about him in the race. This remark rankled even in that stony bosom. The more Ben Buster tried not to care, the more it tortured him. To make matters worse, he had betrayed himself too soon to the sagacious Fandy. In vain the big brother cajoled the little one; in vain, at cautious intervals, he tried the effect of indirect bribes and hidden threats. The more he desired to know what that girl had said, the more Fandy wouldn't tell him. At last he triumphed. In a yielding moment, when Ben had been touchingly kind, the grateful youngster let it out:
"You want t' know what that girl said? It was a compliment! She said: 'How splendid your brother Ben can row!' He! he! Now lend me your gimlet just a minute!"
Ah, that dignified Ben! Not for the world would he have had the small child know how those words thrilled him.
"Dorothy Reed said it! It sounds like her," was Ben's ecstatic thought; but to poor Fandy's surprise and disappointment, he only muttered aloud: "There, there, that's a good little boy. Go and play!"
BEN'S CIDER EXPERIENCE.
Many a time after that, in the sanctity of the lonely fields, did Ben, rather sheepishly, repeat to himself the bewitching phrase:
"How splendid your brother Ben can row!"