The Store Boy

CHAPTER XIII A STARTLING EVENT

Though Ben had failed in the main ob­ject of his ex­pe­di­tion, he re­turned to Pen­tonville in ex­cel­lent spir­its. He felt that he had been a fa­vorite of for­tune, and with good rea­son. In one day he had ac­quired a sum equal to five weeks' wages. Added to the dol­lar Mr. Craw­ford had con­tribut­ed to­ward his ex­pens­es, he had been paid twen­ty-​one dol­lars, while he had spent a lit­tle less than two. It is not ev­ery coun­try boy who goes up to the great city who re­turns with an equal har­vest. If Squire Dav­en­port had not threat­ened to fore­close the mort­gage, he would have felt jus­ti­fied in buy­ing a present for his moth­er. As it was, he feared they would have need of all the mon­ey that came in to meet con­tin­gen­cies.

The train reached Pen­tonville at five o'clock, and about the usu­al time Ben opened the gate and walked up to the front door of his mod­est home. He looked so bright and cheer­ful when he en­tered her pres­ence that Mrs. Bar­clay thought be must have found and been kind­ly re­ceived by the cousin whom he had gone up to seek.

“Did you see Mr. Pe­ters?” she asked anx­ious­ly.

“No, moth­er; he is in Eu­rope.”

A shad­ow came over the moth­er's face. It was like tak­ing from her her last hope.

“I was afraid you would not be re­paid for go­ing up to the city,” she said.

“I made a pret­ty good day's work of it, nev­er­the­less, moth­er. What do you say to this?” and he opened his wal­let and showed her a roll of bills.

“Is that Mr. Craw­ford's mon­ey?” she asked.

“No, moth­er, it is mine, or rather it is yours, for I give it to you.”

“Did you find a pock­et­book, Ben? If so, the own­er may turn up.”

“Moth­er, the mon­ey is mine, fair­ly mine, for it was giv­en me in re­turn for a ser­vice I ren­dered a la­dy in New York.”

“What ser­vice could you have pos­si­bly ren­dered, Ben, that mer­it­ed such lib­er­al pay­ment?” asked his moth­er in sur­prise.

Up­on this Ben ex­plained, and Mrs. Bar­clay lis­tened to his sto­ry with won­der.

“So you see, moth­er, I did well to go to the city,” said Ben, in con­clu­sion.

“It has turned out so, and I am thank­ful for your good for­tune. But I should have been bet­ter pleased if you had seen Mr. Pe­ters and found him will­ing to help us about the mort­gage.”

“So would I, moth­er, but this mon­ey is worth hav­ing. When sup­per is over I will go to the store to help out Mr. Craw­ford and re­port my pur­chase of goods. You know the most of our trade is in the evening.”

Af­ter Ben had gone Mrs. Bar­clay felt her spir­its re­turn as she thought of the large ad­di­tion to their lit­tle stock of mon­ey.

“One piece of good for­tune may be fol­lowed by an­oth­er,” she thought. “Mr. Pe­ters may re­turn from Eu­rope in time to help us. At any rate, we have near­ly three months to look about us, and God may send us help.”

When the tea dish­es were washed and put away Mrs. Bar­clay sat down to mend a pair of Ben's socks, for in that house­hold it was nec­es­sary to make cloth­ing last as long as pos­si­ble, when she was aroused from her work by a ring­ing at the bell.

She opened the door to ad­mit Squire Dav­en­port.

“Good-​evening,” she said rather cold­ly, for she could not feel friend­ly to a man who was con­spir­ing to de­prive her of her mod­est home and turn her out up­on the side­walk.

“Good-​evening, wid­ow,” said the squire.

“Will you walk in?” asked Mrs. Bar­clay, not over cor­dial­ly.

“Thank you, I will step in for five min­utes. I called to see if you had thought bet­ter of my pro­pos­al the oth­er evening.”

“Your pro­pos­al was to take my house from me,” said Mrs. Bar­clay. “How can you sup­pose I would think bet­ter of that?”

“You for­get that the house is more mine than yours al­ready, Mrs. Bar­clay. The sum I have ad­vanced on mort­gage is two-​thirds of the val­ue of the prop­er­ty.”

“I dis­pute that, sir.”

“Let it pass,” said the squire, with a wave of the hand. “Call it three-​fifths, if you will. Even then the prop­er­ty is more mine than yours. Wom­en don't un­der­stand busi­ness, or you would see mat­ters in a dif­fer­ent light.”

“I am a wom­an, it is true, but I un­der­stand very well that you wish to take ad­van­tage of me,” said the wid­ow, not with­out ex­cus­able bit­ter­ness.

“My good la­dy, you for­get that I am ready to can­cel the mort­gage and pay you three hun­dred and fifty dol­lars for the house. Now, three hun­dred and fifty dol­lars is a hand­some sum--a very hand­some sum. You could put it in the sav­ings bank and it would yield you quite a com­fort­able in­come.”

“Twen­ty dol­lars, more or less,” said Mrs. Bar­clay. “Is that what you call a com­fort­able in­come? How long do you think it would keep us alive?”

“Added, of course, to your son's wages. Ben is now able to earn good wages.”

“He earns four dol­lars a week, and that is our main de­pen­dence.”

“I con­grat­ulate you. I didn't sup­pose Mr. Craw­ford paid such high wages.”

“Ben earns ev­ery cent of it.”

“Very pos­si­bly. By the way, what is this that Tom was telling me about Ben be­ing sent to New York to buy goods for the store?”

“It is true, if that is what you mean.”

“Bless my soul! It is very strange of Craw­ford, and I may add, not very ju­di­cious.”

“I sup­pose Mr. Craw­ford is the best judge of that, sir.”

“Even if the boy were com­pe­tent, which is not for a mo­ment to be thought of, it is cal­cu­lat­ed to fos­ter his self-​con­ceit.”

“Ben is not self-​con­ceit­ed,” said Mrs. Bar­clay, ready to re­sent any slur up­on her boy. “He has ex­cel­lent busi­ness ca­pac­ity, and if he were old­er I should not need to ask fa­vors of any­one.”

“You are a moth­er, and nat­ural­ly set an ex­ag­ger­at­ed es­ti­mate up­on your son's abil­ity, which, I pre­sume, is re­spectable, but prob­ably not more. How­ev­er, let that pass. I did not call to dis­cuss Ben but to in­quire whether you had not thought bet­ter of the mat­ter we dis­cussed the oth­er evening.”

“I nev­er shall, Squire Dav­en­port. When the time comes you can fore­close, if you like, but it will nev­er be done with my con­sent.”

“Ahem! Your con­sent will not be re­quired.”

“And let me tell you, Squire Dav­en­port, if you do this wicked thing, it won't ben­efit you in the end.”

Squire Dav­en­port shrugged his shoul­ders.

“I am not at all sur­prised to find you so un­rea­son­able, Mrs. Bar­clay,” he said. “It's the way with wom­en. I should be glad if you would come to look up­on the mat­ter in a dif­fer­ent light; but I can­not sac­ri­fice my own in­ter­ests in any event. The law is on my side.”

“The law may be on your side, but the law up­holds a great deal that is op­pres­sive and cru­el.”

“A cu­ri­ous set of laws we should have if wom­en made them,” said the squire.

“They would not bear so heav­ily up­on the poor as they do now.”

“Well, I won't stop to dis­cuss the mat­ter. If you come to en­ter­tain dif­fer­ent views about the house, send word by Ben, and we will ar­range the de­tails with­out de­lay. Mr. Kirk is anx­ious to move his fam­ily as soon as pos­si­ble, and would like to se­cure the house at once.”

“He will have to wait three months at least,” said Mrs. Bar­clay cold­ly. “For that time, I be­lieve the law pro­tects me.”

“You are right there; but at the end of that tine you can­not ex­pect as lib­er­al terms as we are now pre­pared to of­fer you.”

“Lib­er­al!” re­peat­ed the wid­ow, in a mean­ing tone.

“So I re­gard it,” said the squire stiffly. “Good-​evening.”

An hour lat­er Mrs. Bar­clay's re­flec­tions were bro­ken in up­on by the omi­nous clang of the en­gine bell. This is a sound which al­ways ex­cites alarm in a coun­try vil­lage.

“Where's the fire?” she asked anx­ious­ly, of a boy who was run­ning by the house.

“It's Craw­ford's store!” was the startling re­ply. “It's blazin' up like any­thing. Guess it'll have to go.”

“I hope Ben'll keep out of dan­ger,” thought Mrs. Bar­clay, as she hur­ried­ly took her shawl and bon­net and start­ed for the scene of ex­cite­ment.