The Store Boy

CHAPTER XX ENTERING UPON HIS DUTIES

When Ben had tak­en out his cloth­ing from his valise and put it away in the draw­ers of the hand­some bu­reau which formed a part of the fur­ni­ture of his room, he went down­stairs, and found his pa­troness in a cozy sit­ting room, on the sec­ond floor. It was fur­nished, Ben could not help think­ing, more as if it were de­signed for a gen­tle­man than a la­dy. In one cor­ner was a li­brary ta­ble, with writ­ing ma­te­ri­als, books, and pa­pers up­on it, and an ar­ray of draw­ers on ei­ther side of the cen­tral part.

“Come right in, Ben,” said Mrs. Hamil­ton, who was seat­ed at the ta­ble. “We will talk of busi­ness.”

This Ben was quite will­ing to do. He was anx­ious to know what were to be his du­ties, that he might judge whether he was com­pe­tent to dis­charge them.

“Let me tell you, to be­gin with,” said his pa­troness, “that I am pos­sessed of con­sid­er­able wealth, as, in­deed, you may have judged by way of liv­ing. I have no chil­dren, un­for­tu­nate­ly, and be­ing un­will­ing, self­ish­ly, to de­vote my en­tire means to my own use ex­clu­sive­ly, I try to help oth­ers in a way that I think most suit­able. Mrs. Hill, who acts as my house­keep­er, is a cousin, who made a poor mar­riage, and was left pen­ni­less. I have giv­en a home to her and her son.”

“I don't think Mrs. Hill likes my be­ing here,” said Ben.

“You are, no doubt, right. She is fool­ish enough to be jeal­ous be­cause I do not be­stow all my fa­vors up­on her.”

“I think she will look up­on me as a ri­val of her son.”

“I ex­pect­ed she would. Per­haps she will learn, af­ter a while, that I can be a friend to you and him both, though, I am free to ad­mit, I have nev­er been able to take any fan­cy to Con­rad, nor, in­deed, was his moth­er a fa­vorite with me. But for her needy cir­cum­stances, she is, per­haps, the last of my rel­atives that I would in­vite to be­come a mem­ber of my house­hold. How­ev­er, to come to busi­ness: My mon­ey is in­vest­ed in var­ious ways. Be­sides the or­di­nary forms of in­vest­ment, stocks, bonds, and mort­gages, I have set up two or three young men, whom I thought wor­thy, in busi­ness, and re­quire them to send in month­ly state­ments of their busi­ness to me. You see, there­fore, that I have more or less to do with ac­counts. I nev­er had much taste for fig­ures, and it struck me that I might re­lieve my­self of con­sid­er­able drudgery if I could ob­tain your as­sis­tance, un­der my su­per­vi­sion, of course. I hope you have a taste for fig­ures?”

“Arith­metic and al­ge­bra are my fa­vorite stud­ies,” said Ben prompt­ly.

“I am glad of it. Of course, I did not know that, but had you not been well versed in ac­counts, I meant to send you to a com­mer­cial school to qual­ify you for the du­ties I wished to im­pose up­on you.”

“I don't think it will be nec­es­sary,” an­swered Ben. “I have tak­en lessons in book­keep­ing at home, and, though it seems like boast­ing, I was bet­ter in math­emat­ics than any of my schoolfel­lows.”

“I am so glad to hear that. Can you write well?”

“Shall I write some­thing for you?”

“Do so.”

Mrs. Hamil­ton va­cat­ed her place, and Ben, sit­ting at the desk, wrote two or three copies from re­mem­brance.

“Very well, in­deed!” said his pa­troness ap­prov­ing­ly. “I see that in en­gag­ing you I have made no mis­take.”

Ben's cheek flushed with plea­sure, and he was ea­ger to en­ter up­on his new du­ties. But he could not help won­der­ing why he had been se­lect­ed when Con­rad was al­ready in the house, and un­em­ployed. He ven­tured to say:

“Would you mind telling me why you did not em­ploy Con­rad, in­stead of send­ing for me?”

“There are two good and suf­fi­cient rea­sons: Con­rad is not com­pe­tent for such an of­fice; and sec­ond­ly, I should not like to have the boy about me as much as he would need to be. I have ob­tained for him a po­si­tion out of the house. One ques­tion re­mains to be con­sid­ered: How much wages do you ex­pect?”

“I would pre­fer to leave that to you, Mrs. Hamil­ton. I can­not ex­pect high pay.”

“Will ten dol­lars a week be ad­equate?”

“I can't earn as much mon­ey as that,” said Ben, in sur­prise.

“Per­haps not, and yet I am not sure. If you suit me, it will be worth my while to pay you as much.”

“But Con­rad will on­ly re­ceive four dol­lars a week. Won't he be an­gry?”

“Con­rad is not called up­on to sup­port his moth­er, as I un­der­stand you are.”

“You are very kind to think of that, Mrs. Hamil­ton.”

“I want to be kind to you, Ben,” said his pa­troness with a pleas­ant smile.

“When shall I com­mence my du­ties?”

“Now. You will copy this state­ment in­to the ledger you see here. Be­fore do­ing so, will you look over and ver­ify the fig­ures?”

Ben was soon hard at work. He was in­ter­est­ed in his work, and the time slipped fast. Af­ter an hour and a half had passed, Mrs. Hamil­ton said:

“It is about time for lunch, and I think there will be no more to do to-​day. Are you fa­mil­iar with New York?”

“No, I have spent very lit­tle time in the city.”

“You will, no doubt, like to look about. We have din­ner at six sharp. You will be on tine?”

“I will be sure to be here.”

“That re­minds me--have you a watch?”

Ben shook his head.

“I thought it might be so. I have a good sil­ver watch, which I have no oc­ca­sion for.”

Mrs. Hamil­ton left the room, and quick­ly re­turned with a neat sil­ver hunt­ing-​case watch, with a guilt chain.

“This is yours, Ben,” she said, “if you like it.”

“Do you give it to me?” asked Ben joy­ous­ly. He had on­ly ex­pect­ed that it would be loaned to him.

“Yes, I give it to you, and I hope you will find it use­ful.”

“How can I thank you, Mrs. Hamil­ton, for your kind­ness?”

“You are more grate­ful than Con­rad. I gave him one just like it, and he was ev­ident­ly dis­sat­is­fied be­came it was not gold. When you are old­er the gold watch may come.”

“I am very well pleased with the sil­ver watch, for I have long want­ed one, but did not see any way of ob­tain­ing it.”

“You are wise in hav­ing mod­er­ate de­sires, Ben. But there goes the lunch bell. You may want to wash your hands. When you have done so come down to the din­ing room, in the rear of the sit­ting room.”

Mrs. Hill and Con­rad were al­ready seat­ed at the ta­ble when Ben de­scend­ed.

“Take a seat op­po­site Con­rad, Ben,” said Mrs. Hamil­ton, who was sit­ting at one end of the ta­ble.

The lunch was plain but sub­stan­tial, and Ben, who had tak­en an ear­ly break­fast, en­joyed it.

“I sup­pose we shall not have Con­rad at lunch to-​mor­row?” said Mrs. Hamil­ton. “He will be at the store.”

Con­rad made a gri­mace. He world have en­joyed his free­dom bet­ter.

“I won't have much of my four dol­lars left if I have to pay for lunch,” he said in a surly tone.

“You shall have a rea­son­able al­lowance for that pur­pose.”

“I sup­pose Mr. Bar­clay will lunch at home,” said Mrs. Hill.

“Cer­tain­ly, since his work will be here. He is to be my home clerk, and will keep my ac­counts.”

“You needn't have gone out of the house for a clerk, Cousin Hamil­ton. I am sure Con­rad would have been glad of the work.”

“It will be bet­ter for Con­rad to learn busi­ness in a larg­er es­tab­lish­ment,” said Mrs. Hamil­ton qui­et­ly.

This was a new way of look­ing at it, and helped to rec­on­cile Mrs. Hill to an ar­range­ment which at first had dis­ap­point­ed her.

“Have you any en­gage­ments this af­ter­noon, Con­rad?” asked Mrs. Hamil­ton. “Ben will have noth­ing to do, and you could show him the city.”

“I've got an en­gage­ment with a fel­low,” said Con­rad hasti­ly.

“I can find my way about alone, thank you,” said Ben. “I won't trou­ble Con­rad.”

“Very well. This evening, how­ev­er, Ben, I think you may en­joy go­ing to the the­ater. Con­rad can ac­com­pa­ny you, un­less he has an­oth­er en­gage­ment.”

“I'll go with him,” said Con­rad, more gra­cious­ly, for he was fond of amuse­ments.

“Then we will all meet at din­ner, and you two young gen­tle­men can leave in good time for the the­ater.”