‘Indeed there seems very little,’ she said, ‘much less than on most days; but it was very kind of you to think of coming and reading to me, Ben.’
‘I mean to come ever morning, mother,’ he replied,—at which Mrs. Renton shivered,—‘and relieve Mary a little. By-the-bye, I want to know whether you will mind if I have Hillyard here. I told him he was to come on Saturday, if he did not hear from me to the contrary. He is not quite in your way, but he is a very good fellow. I thought you would not mind if I had him here.’
‘My dear boy, the house is yours,—or at least it will soon be yours,’ said Mrs. Renton. ‘It is very nice of you to consult me, and you know I am not very able to receive strangers; but still Mary is there to do all that is necessary, and of course you must have your friends.’
‘Mother, I should like you to understand that it is not at all of course,’ said Ben. ‘The house is not mine,—I am not calculating that it will ever be mine. I want Hillyard, not so much because he is my friend, as because he is with me in business. He is my right-hand man——’
‘It was Mr. Hillyard you went to America with at first?’ said Mary, from her distant seat.
And Ben, relieved, walked across the room, finding she was easier to talk to than his mother. ‘Eh? Yes, it is the same Hillyard,’ he said, with a laugh which had some pleasure in it. ‘I was his right-hand man then, and now he is mine. That is all the difference; but we have always hung together all the same.’
‘Then you have done better than he has,’ said Mary, looking up at him with a smile.
And Ben came and stood by the side of the table she was working at, and looked down upon her as he spoke. ‘He’s a very good fellow,’ he said, ‘but he does not stick to his work. There are some people who do best to be masters, and some who do best to be subordinate. And when he is not master, poor fellow, he is worth a dozen ordinary men.’
‘When some one else is master?’ said Mary, with natural female gratification.
‘No compliments,’ said Ben. ‘A man needs to be as hard as iron, and as bold as brass;—though why brass should be the emblem of unpleasant boldness, by the way, I don’t know.’