"You can take it as such, or not, jest as you please! I leave it to your own consciences. You know best whether you have done your duty to Sophrony and her family, whilst her husband has been off to the war; and I sha'n't set myself up for a judge. You never had any boys of your own, and so you adopted Reuben, jest as you have lately adopted Thaddeus; and I s'pose you think you've done well by him, jest as you think you will do by Thaddeus, if he's a good boy, and stays with you till he's twenty-one." "I hope no one thinks or says the contrary, Miss Beswick!" said Mr. Ducklow, gravely, with flushed face. "There may be two opinions on that subject!" said Miss Beswick, with a slight toss of the head, setting that small and irregular spheroid at a still loftier and more imposing altitude. "Reuben came to you when he was jest old enough to be of use about the house and on the farm; and if I recollect right, you didn't encourage idleness in him long. You didn't give his hands much chance to do 'some mischief still'! No, indeed! nobody can accuse you of that weakness!" And the skin of the wrinkled features tightened with a terrible grin. "Nobody can say we ever overworked the boy, or ill used him in any way!" exclaimed Mrs. Ducklow, excitedly. "No! _I_ don't say it! But this I'll say, for I've had it in my mind ever since Sophrony was left alone,--I couldn't help seein' and feelin', and, now you've set me a-talkin', I may as well speak out. Reuben was always a good boy, and a willin' boy, as you yourselves must allow; and he paid his way from the first." "I don't know about that!" interposed Mr. Ducklow, taking up his knife and fork, and dropping them again, in no little agitation. "He was a good and willin' boy, as you say; but the expense of clothin' him and keepin' him to school"---- "He paid his way from the first!" repeated Miss Beswick, sternly. "You kept him to school winters, when he did more work 'fore and after school than any other boy in town. He worked all the time summers; and soon he was as good as a hired man to you. He never went to school a day after he was fifteen; and from that time he was better 'n any hired man, for he was faithful, and took an interest, and looked after and took care of things, as no hired man ever would or could do, as I've heard you yourself say, Mr. Ducklow!" "Reuben was a good, faithful boy: I never denied that! I never denied that!" "Well, he stayed with you till he was twenty-one,--did ye a man's service for the last five or six years; then you giv' him what you called a settin' out,--a new suit o' clothes, a yoke of oxen, some farmin'-tools, and a hundred dollars in money! You, with yer thousands, Mr. Ducklow, giv' him a hundred dollars in money!" "That was only a beginnin', only a beginnin', I've always said!" declared the red-flushed farmer.