“His mother favors him always, and that spoils him. He’s envious and suspicious, always imagining that some one’s going to slight him; and she makes this silly feeling worse by encouraging him in it.” “I know he always looks sidewise at me, as though he thought I meant to trip him up, or eat his share of the treat, or get the best of him somehow.” “Perhaps you’d rather I wouldn’t tell him about that place?” “Tell him, if you want to; but I don’t believe you’ll get any thanks for it. He’ll think it’s some sort of a trap we’ve set for him.” “How do you suppose he ever got into such a habit?” “Partly disposition, partly habit. It’s a habit that grows, till after a while he will not trust any one. But don’t let’s talk of him when we can talk about the scheme. Beth, if it pans out, I’ll always think you were my fairy godmother.” “I? Why, I haven’t done anything at all!” “Yes, you have. You’ve shown me the way, just like the fairy godmother who pointed out the ring in the tree-trunk to Aladdin and told him to pull and a door would open that would lead down to the treasure-house.” “That wasn’t a fairy godmother; it was a magician, an old Chinaman; so I don’t feel complimented.” Ben did not reply. He was busily planning how to reach his treasure. “I’ll have to have machinery and things; and at least one man to help me, I suppose,” he said. “I don’t know, exactly, what I’d better do first. But I can find out,” he added, with a rather blank look. A few minutes before he had exulted in the fact that he was his own master, to negotiate the business and carry it on unaided; but already he found himself wishing for some friend of experience with whom he could consult. A few of the difficulties to be surmounted had dawned upon him. “Why not ask Hodges about it?” “I don’t want to do that if I can help it. I know just how he’d sneer and throw cold water on it all.” “Couldn’t you find a partner?” “I’m not sure that I want to. If I let others into it I’d be afraid they’d freeze me out. Men with more money than he had did that to father lots of times.” “O, I hope you won’t get cheated, Ben!” She clasped her hands and looked so distressed that he laughed. “I’ll be too many for them. I’d better paddle my own canoe, though, and then there won’t be any danger.” “I don’t see why there need be any such thing as cheating in the world.” “It’s a queer old world. Mother used to say that sometimes she thought it was the lunatic asylum of the universe.” “I should think, for instance, that in case you work over the old Works and get out the gold, everybody would be glad that you’d succeeded, and would go on with their own work and earn their own money, without wanting to cheat you out of yours.” “I know, Beth, that’s the fair way to look at it; but all men don’t feel that way. Those that don’t are the ones I’ve got to look out for.” “When men are so selfish, it makes life just a big fight.”