BENNY AND A RING
It was very pleasant to be awakened in the morning by the song of
birds, and Benny felt inclined to lie still and listen to them, but he
suddenly remembered that he was not there as a picker, and could not be
quite so independent in the matter of hours and minutes. He must get up
and go down to help Mrs. Bentley. Therefore he jumped up and quickly
dressed himself, and had the fire made before Mrs. Bentley appeared.
She smiled her satisfaction. It was something, after all, to have a
small willing boy in place of a lazy, shiftless woman, and she hardly
regretted her slovenly and incompetent servant, although the work of
getting breakfast was all her own.
Benny, however, tried to make it easy for her. He brought in water,
fed the chickens, went to the dairy, and even set the table, with the
help of little Jamie, who showed him where to get dishes and knives and
forks. He had finished with satisfaction, for he had given a finishing
touch by bringing in a bunch of wild roses he had discovered on his way
to the spring, and these he had placed in a glass in the middle of the
table.
“Do you like flowers, Benny?” Mrs. Bentley asked, as she saw his pride
in the ornament.
“’Deed I do,” Benny replied.
“Then you shall work in my garden when you have helped me through the
morning’s work. It has been sadly neglected of late, for we have been
so short of help. I reckon pulling weeds will be as easy as picking
strawberries, and you will be in the shade part of the time, which is
more than you would be out there in the fields. Now, come sit down, and
help us eat some of the strawberries you have helped to pick. We have
some famous big ones this morning; unless you are tired of them,” she
added.
Benny stoutly declared that he was not, and soberly said: “You know
I didn’t get paid to eat them, but to pick them,” at which speech
every one laughed. So, feeling a little bashful at that, Benny added:
“Besides, there is no cream or sugar or biscuits to eat with them out
there in the strawberry patch.” But this did not help matters any, for
Mr. Bentley burst into a second laugh and told his wife she was very
inconsiderate not to furnish these extras to the pickers.
But Mrs. Bentley, seeing the abashed look on Benny’s face, told him
never to mind, that he had a good right to all he could eat, with cream
or without, and that she was glad he was able to enjoy her biscuits.
It was a busy morning, the latter half of it spent among the flower
beds. At first Benny was rather puzzled to know the difference between
flowers and weeds, but here Jamie came to his rescue, for the little
fellow had kept his eyes and his ears open, and being country bred,
knew “pusley” from portulacca, and lamb’s quarter from China asters.
The ill-smelling wormweed was easily enough found out, and after a
while Ben grew to know the purslane, because it was so very pushing,
and he understood what Mrs. Bentley meant when she said something was
as “mean as pusley,” for it certainly did seem to crop up in every
direction.
Jamie at last grew tired of playing gardener, and left Benny to
himself. He worked away busily and saw his pile of weeds growing bigger
and bigger, while the flower beds began to look much more orderly. He
was smoothing the earth around a rosebush which had been disturbed by
the too close shouldering of a big nettle, when he saw something under
the green leaves of the bush he had pushed aside. He picked up the
shining thing and brushed off the clay from a gold ring which had lain
hidden, he did not know how long. He turned it over in his hand. It was
a pretty ring with a row of blue stones in it, like little pieces of
sky, Benny thought. He would like to take it home to Kitty. How pleased
she would be. It was rather large for her little hand, to be sure, but
she could keep it till she grew older.
But all at once came the thought. Why, it isn’t mine. Some one must
have lost it, and will be glad to get it again. “I ought to have
thought of that at first,” Benny muttered to himself. He wasted no time
in running around to the kitchen, stopping on the way to give the ring
a good washing at the pump. He carried it, looking very bright and
shining in the palm of his hand, to Mrs. Bentley.
“Mrs. Bentley,” he said, “see what I have found. Is it yours?”
He went over to where she was putting the finishing touches to a
toothsome-looking pie.
She took the ring and turned it over, then she looked at Benny’s honest
little face. “No, it isn’t mine,” she told him, “but I know whose it
is, and she’ll be glad enough to get it again. She will so,” she added
after a moment’s thought. “It is Beulah Martin’s. She is my niece,
and she lives down the road about a mile.” She held the ring, lightly
tossing it about in her palm. “I tell you what you shall do; you shall
go and take it to her as soon as you have helped me through the dinner
dishes. You have worked like a Trojan this morning and you deserve to
have a little time to go down there. It isn’t so very far. You might go
down with one of the wagons and they can put you off at the gate.” She
did not say anything about Ben’s honesty in bringing it to her, and he
was glad she had taken it for granted that he would do just that thing.
He was better pleased than if she had been surprised at his doing it.
So, about three o’clock, he started off down the level white road,
mounted on the high seat of one of the wagons. “That’s Martins’,” the
driver said, as they approached a yellow house among the trees.
Benny clambered down and trudged up the lane. He was wondering whether
he should knock at the front door or go around to the kitchen, when
he saw that some one was sitting on the top step of the porch. As he
came nearer he saw that it was a pretty girl in a pink dress. She had
some embroidery in her hand and was busily working upon it. A big dog,
seeing a stranger coming, jumped up from where he was lying under a
tree, and began to bark furiously. “Rod, Rod, come back!” called the
girl. “Aren’t you ashamed of yourself, sir? Don’t be afraid of him,
little boy, he won’t hurt you, but he thinks it is his duty to bark at
anyone who comes up the walk, unless it is one of the family.”
“I’m not afraid,” Benny replied. “I think he looks like a nice dog.
See, he is wagging his tail.” And so he was, and Benny patted him on
the head, an attention the dog seemed to receive in good part, for he
looked up at the little boy and put up a huge paw to be shaken. “He is
a very nice dog,” Benny repeated, well pleased to be friends with the
creature.
“So he is,” the girl replied. “His name is Roderick. What is yours?”
“Mine is Benny Jordan. Are you Miss Beulah Martin?”
“Yes; how did you know?”
“Mrs. Bentley told me.”
“Aunt Mary? Did she send you over?”
“Yes, at least I found this and she told me where to bring it.” He held
out the ring, coming a step nearer.
“Oh!” The color flew up into the girl’s face. “Oh, how glad I am. You
don’t know how glad I am. Tell me all about it.”
Benny told her where he had found it, under a certain rosebush, and how
the big nettle had grown up there, and that he had seen this shining
thing at its roots. The girl listened with her eyes on the ring.
“You were a dear child to bring it right away,” she said, when he had
finished.
“Mrs. Bentley told me to. I work there, you know.”
Beulah questioned him, and he told her how and why he had come. Her
eyes looked at him wistfully when he had finished. “I wish I had
something to give you for finding this.”
Benny put his hands behind him. “Oh, but I wouldn’t take it. I didn’t
work for it. I just happened to find it, and I am as glad as can be
that I did.”
“I value it very much. I don’t think I own anything that I value so
much, and I do want to give you something, but I can’t, I’m afraid, for
we’re not very rich, and I hardly ever have any money to spend. I want
you to have a piece of cake, though. I made it myself this morning.”
Benny felt that he need not refuse a piece of cake, and he sat down
on the step while she went to get it. She came back with what Benny
thought was the most delicious slice of cake he had ever tasted. As he
sat there eating it, Beulah said: “Let’s pretend I am a fairy who could
grant you your wish, something just for your own self and nobody else;
what would you like? So long as I can’t give it to you, it won’t do any
harm, and we can make out that I am going to give you something more
than my thanks.”
Benny was nothing loth to play “make pretend”; he and Kitty had played
it too often for it to be an unfamiliar game. So he sat soberly
thinking and munching his cake. There was one thing he wanted very,
very much; so much that he scarcely liked to utter the wish, for it
was so near his heart. He had dreamed of it, longed for it, but it was
something so unattainable that he could never dare to hope for it.
But after a little while he said, shyly and hesitatingly: “I want a
bicycle, awfully.”
Beulah dropped her work in her lap and gave a little scream of delight.
“To think you should say that! And to think I forgot! Why, that is the
one thing--just wait a minute.” She jumped up and ran around the side
of the house. Presently, Benny heard her call, “Benny, Benny, come
here!”
He followed the voice which led him to the door of an old building used
as a sort of shop. In the doorway Beulah was standing. “Come here,” she
said. “Do you think this will do?”
Was she fooling him? Was this a “make pretend”? His heart beat fast as
he saw that she really did have her hand on something which looked like
a wheel, and, as he came up, she rolled out a bicycle; not a very new
one, but one in pretty good condition and just about the size for a boy
of his inches.
“Look here,” she said, “I believe this is just big enough for you.
My uncle gave it to my brother two or three years ago. Charlie has
outgrown it, for he has grown so tall. Now he is at my uncle’s in the
city where he is going to school, and when he went away he said: ‘Sis,
you can have my old wheel; maybe somebody will buy it and you can have
what it will bring.’ But nobody about here has wanted it, so it is on
my hands. Now, please, please, won’t you take it? I’d be so glad if you
would.”
“Really?” he said. “Honest, do you want me to have it?”
“Honest, I do. I’d rather you would have it than anyone in the world.
Just try it and see how it goes. It had the tires blown up not so very
long ago, so I reckon that will not need to be done right away.”
Benny mounted--what boy does not know how to ride a wheel?--and rode
around the house once or twice. “She goes like a breeze,” he said, his
face shining.
“Then she’s yours.”
Benny looked at Beulah. She held against her lips the ring which she
had slipped on her finger. “If you love that ring half as much as I do
this wheel,” he said, presently, “you’re mighty fond of it.”
Beulah laughed. The soft color flushed up into her cheeks again. She
gave his shoulder a gentle pressure. “I do,” she told him, “and more.”
“Did I say thank you, Miss Beulah? If I didn’t, I think it a hundred
thousand times.”
“And I say, thank you a hundred thousand times. Good-by!” For Benny had
mounted his wheel and was spinning down the level road, the happiest
boy anywhere about.