“I shall come back, mother, to you; I know I shall. God will take care of me; I will try and do right, and serve Him faithfully; and perhaps, mother, I may bring back Ned with me,” said Ben to his mother, who had taken up her abode with Mrs Charlton. These were his last words to her as he again and again embraced her, and then, tearing himself away, he ran after the lieutenant, who was walking rapidly down the street towards the inn from which the coach started that was to convey them to Portsmouth.
Ben felt as if he had reached a new world even as he travelled along the road, much more so when he entered London itself, where Mr Charlton went to the house of a relation. Ben was shown into the kitchen, and handed over to the care of the page. He found that, at the very outset of his career, he was to meet with temptation to do wrong. After the late dinner, the page came down with two rich-looking dishes untouched, and took them into a little room, where he had invited Ben to meet him.
“Be quick, let us eat them up,” he said, “all but a small part of each; the housekeeper will never find it out, and I can tell cook how much I heard people praising them.”
“No; unless the housekeeper or cook gives it to us, I will touch nothing,” answered Ben stoutly.
“Nonsense! wherever did you learn such stuff?” exclaimed the page in surprise. “Why, we think nothing of that sort of thing; what harm can come of it?”
“I don’t see that that has anything to do with the matter,” said Ben. “I’ve been taught always to do right, whatever comes of it; and ’tis doing very far from right to take what doesn’t belong to one; it is doing very wrong—it is stealing.”
“I never should have thought that,” said the page; “I wouldn’t steal sixpence from no one, that I wouldn’t! but just taking something out of a dish of good things that comes down from the parlour is altogether different.”
“Now I don’t see any difference at all,” said Ben, more earnestly than before; “the long and the short of the matter is, that it’s wrong, and we mustn’t do wrong even if we fancy good is to come out of it. Just the contrary: we must do right, whatever we think may come out of it. God says, ‘Do right.’ He’ll take care of the rest.”
The page did not utter another word, and Ben had the satisfaction of seeing him take the dishes into the housekeeper’s room. This was a great encouragement to him. “If I can persuade one person to do right in what he thinks a trifle, I may persuade others; and, at all events, I will go on, with God’s help, doing so whenever I have an opportunity,” said Ben to himself. “That is right, I know.”
The page was not at all the less friendly after this, but he treated Ben with much more respect, and Ben was very sorry to part with him. Nearly his last words to him were, “Never mind what you have been accustomed to think or to do, but just remember to do right at all times. Jesus Christ, who came on earth to save us, and to teach us how to live and act in the world, has left us an example that we should walk in His steps. And if we were always to ask ourselves what He would have done if He had been put in our place, and do accordingly, that will be the right thing for us.”