“‘Ben, here is your knife. If I had given it to you at the first, as you wanted me to, very likely it would by this time be broken or lost, and you might have been badly hurt with it. Now you are old enough to value and use it carefully. And when you look at it remember this, my boy, that God often has to do by us as I have by you—refuse us the thing we ask for because it might hurt us, or because the time has not yet come when we are ready for it. Refuses us simply because He loves us.’” “Why, Ben!” exclaimed Posey with wide-open eyes, “I never heard anything like that before. And you talk just like a minister.” “I’m only telling you what my father said. Perhaps because he died so soon afterwards is one reason I’ve always remembered it. And he was good as any minister. I don’t believe there ever was a better father,” and there was a tremble in Ben’s voice. “Tell me about yourself now; I’ve told you all about myself,” urged Posey. CHAPTER X BEN’S STORY “I haven’t much of anything to tell,” Ben answered slowly. “You see, I always lived in the country, and in just one place till father and mother died four years ago. But, oh, it was so pleasant there! Back of the house was the orchard, and beyond that a long hill where we went coasting in the winter, Theodore and I—he’s my brother three years older. At the foot of the hill was a little creek where we used to go fishing in spring. The fish were mostly suckers. I suppose some folks wouldn’t have cooked ’em; but then mothers will do ’most anything for boys; at any rate, such a mother as ours would, and my, but they did taste good! We used to skate on the creek, too, in the winter. But you’ve never been in the country in the winter; you don’t know what fun it is: sliding down hill, sleighriding, and snowballing, all such fun,” and Ben’s eyes sparkled as he named them. “The house, too, was so cozy. A red house with a trumpet-vine growing over it, and a long porch in front. I always like to see a red house because it makes me think of home. And out in the orchard there were strawberry apples, and seek-no-furthers, and nonesuches. A big grapevine ran all along the woodhouse. There was a black-walnut tree in the back yard, some chestnut trees in the pasture, beside hickory trees in the north woods. And didn’t we go nutting in the fall, just didn’t we! Whole bags of nuts to crack in the winter evenings and eat with apples, though the getting ’em is better than the eating, after all. “On the edge of the creek was the sugar bush, and in the spring we used to help father gather the maple sap from the trees and boil it down in the old sugar house. It was hard work, but there was fun with it—the sugaring off, and making wax on the snow, and stirring the warm sugar. I tell you I feel awful sorry for boys who have never lived in the country and had any of the good times. Of course we went to school, not quite a mile over the hill, and Sundays we went three miles to church.