"And I always expect to be," he concluded bitterly.
"Oh, you will find some one to love, Benjamin," said the lad more cheerfully. "Where there's a Jack there's a Jill, you know. And didn't you improve the chances of your wreck on the sandbar? I thought you were smitten, Ben?"
"Hold on, Tommy. Don't speak that way. I love that dear girl more than words can express. She is an angel, Tom, and—"
"Oh, bah! Angel nothing. She's just a pretty, simpering, bread-and-butter do-nothing—"
"Tommy, stop! I won't have it. I will not allow you to speak so of that young lady."
"But I say she is. She's a flirt! She just is and nothing more!"
"Why Thomas, what in the name of Heaven has come over you? You look and speak so strange. You vilify this young lady whom you do not know, and whom I so love. You—"
"She ain't worthy of you, Ben, indeed and 'deed she aint," and Tommy's voice softened and the tears commenced to flow again.
Ben looked at him anxiously. He is sick, he thought. Troubles and privations and the terrors of the wreck on the river have exhausted and worried him into illness.
"Poor, little fellow," said he, putting his arm about the boy's body and drawing him close to him. "You aint well, Tommy, and I know it. There, there—never mind what you said. I know you meant nothing rude. You are only mistaken, Tommy. Bertha is one of the noblest girls that lives. Why do you know she is about to marry a man, whom I know she despises, so that she can give her widowed mother and poor bed-ridden little sister a home?"