"There may be two opinions on that subject!" said Miss Beswick, with a slight toss of the head, setting that small and irregular spheroid at a still loftier and more imposing altitude. "Reuben came to you when he was jest old enough to be of use about the house and on the farm; and if I recollect right, you didn't encourage idleness in him long. You didn't give his hands much chance to do 'some mischief still'! No, indeed! nobody can accuse you of that weakness!" And the skin of the wrinkled features tightened with a terrible grin.
"Nobody can say we ever overworked the boy, or ill used him in any way!" exclaimed Mrs. Ducklow, excitedly.
"No! I don't say it! But this I'll say, for I've had it in my mind ever since Sophrony was left alone,—I couldn't help seein' and feelin', and, now you've set me a-talkin', I may as well speak out. Reuben was always a good boy, and a willin' boy, as you yourselves must allow; and he paid his way from the first."
"I don't know about that!" interposed Mr. Ducklow, taking up his knife and fork, and dropping them again, in no little agitation. "He was a good and willin' boy, as you say; but the expense of clothin' him and keepin' him to school"——
"He paid his way from the first!" repeated Miss Beswick, sternly. "You kept him to school winters, when he did more work 'fore and after school than any other boy in town. He worked all the time summers; and soon he was as good as a hired man to you. He never went to school a day after he was fifteen; and from that time he was better 'n any hired man, for he was faithful, and took an interest, and looked after and took care of things, as no hired man ever would or could do, as I've heard you yourself say, Mr. Ducklow!"
"Reuben was a good, faithful boy: I never denied that! I never denied that!"
"Well, he stayed with you till he was twenty-one,—did ye a man's service for the last five or six years; then you giv' him what you called a settin' out,—a new suit o' clothes, a yoke of oxen, some farmin'-tools, and a hundred dollars in money! You, with yer thousands, Mr. Ducklow, giv' him a hundred dollars in money!"
"That was only a beginnin', only a beginnin', I've always said!" declared the red-flushed farmer.
"I know it; and I s'pose you'll continner to say so till the day of yer death! Then may-be you'll remember Reuben in yer will. That's the way! Keep puttin' him off as long as you can possibly hold on to your property yourself,—then, when you see you've got to go and leave it, give him what you ought to 've gi'n him years before. There a'n't no merit in that kind o' justice, did ye know it, Mr. Ducklow! I tell ye, what belongs to Reuben belongs to him now,—not ten or twenty year hence, when you've done with it, and he most likely won't need it. A few hundred dollars now'll be more useful to him than all your thousands will be by-and-by. After he left you, he took the Moseley farm; everybody respected him, everybody trusted him; he was doin' well, everybody said; then he married Sophrony, and a good and faithful wife she's been to him; and finally he concluded to buy the farm, which you yourself said was a good idee, and encouraged him in 't."
"So it was; Reuben used judgment in that, and he'd have got along well enough, if 't hadn't been for the war," said Mr. Ducklow; while his wife sat dumb, not daring to measure tongues with their vigorous-minded and plain-speaking neighbor.