“Well, if he behaves himself as well as you say he does, I guess Peter won't interfere with him. I'll tell him not to. What's his name?” “Reddy,” said Stephen, for beyond this he did not know that his friend had a name. Fortunately this meant nothing to Benson who had never heard of any such boy. When Reddy was informed that he was free to play in the grounds, he inspected the entire premises with wary caution, and could not on the first visit be induced to go within several hundred yards of the gardener. Yet on a subsequent visit Peter coming upon the small sinner quite unexpectedly, presented him with a red apple, and thus peace and good-will was established between them. “After that I'll never yell belly full of beer at him any more,” said Reddy contritely. Stephen would have liked to introduce him to the splendours of the house itself, but he never succeeded in this; nothing would induce Reddy to enter it; and he fled instantly at sight of Mrs. Pope; which, after all, was perhaps just as well, as she saw him but vaguely through glasses which she was never quite able to bring to bear upon him in season, and so he escaped identification which could only have resulted disastrously. She said he seemed a shy child. But Benson was preparing for Stephen's future in accordance with certain theories of his own. Business had taken him East during the summer, and while there he had visited several boys' schools. At last he found just such an institution as he was looking for. It was both a school and a home. Here Stephen would have the care he could not himself give him, he would have proper associates of his own age, and there would be no danger of his acquiring false and harmful ideas as he grew older as to his expectations in life. It was no part of the lawyer's plan that the boy should be brought back to Benson, at least, not until his habits and judgments were formed. As to his promise to Virginia that she should not be wholly separated from Stephen, it had already become irksome to him. Stephen was his care, his responsibility; no part of it would he share with her; the boy must learn to look to him for everything. His farewells were a bitter, grievous thing to Stephen. They came quick upon Benson's return home, and the parting with his Aunt Virginia, and his Aunt Jane, and Harriett, and the baby, tore his small heart as no grief that had yet entered into his life had torn it. The very stability of things seemed to shake under him; he was stunned and stupefied. He was to go so far away, he could not see his Aunt Virginia, his Aunt Jane, Harriett, or the baby—and the boys! He would probably never see Spike, or Reddy, or Benjamin Wade again! The promise of a return to Benson the next summer, which the lawyer had not been able to deny him, was no comfort to him. If the intervening months had been years they could not have been more terrible to him.