"They do perfectly well," answered Sally, speaking in a firm, direct way as if she were talking to a child; "but if you would feel more comfortable in some of Ben's clothes, he has any number of them at your service. He is about your height, is he not?" "To think of little Benjy growin' so tall," he remarked with a kind of ecstasy, and when we went into the library for a smoke, he insisted upon measuring heights with me against the ledge of the door. Then, alone with me and the cheerful crackling of the log fire, his embarrassment disappeared, and he began to ask a multitude of eager questions about myself and Jessy and my marriage. "And so pa died," he remarked sadly, between the long whiffs of his pipe. "I'm not sure it wasn't the best thing he ever did," I responded. "Well, you see, Benjy, he wa'nt a worker, and when a man ain't a worker there's mighty little to stand between him and drink. Now, ma, she was a worker." "And we got it from her. That's why we hate to be idle, I suppose." "Did it ever strike you, Benjy," he enquired solemnly, after a minute, "that in the marriage of ma and pa the breeches were on the wrong one of 'em? Pa wa'nt much of a man, but he would have made a female that we could have been proud of. With all the good working qualities, we never could be proud of ma when we considered her as a female." "Well, I don't know, but I think she was the best we ever had." "We are proud of Jessy," he pursued reflectively. "Yes, we are proud of Jessy," I repeated, and as I uttered the words, I remembered her beautiful blighted look, while she sat cold and silent, crumbling her bit of bread. "And we are proud of you, Benjy," he added, "but you ain't any particular reason to be proud of me. You can't be proud of a man that ain't had an eddication." "Well, the education doesn't make the man, you know." "It does a good deal towards it. The stuffing goes a long way with the goose, as poor ma used to say. Do you ever think what ma would have been if she'd had an eddication? An eddication and breeches would have made a general of her. It must take a powerful lot of patience to stand being born a female." He took a wad of tobacco from his pocket, eyed it timidly, and after glancing at the tiled hearth, put it back again. "You know what I would do if I were a rich man, Benjy?" he said; "I'd buy a railroad." "You'd have to be a very rich man, indeed, to do that." "It's a little dead-beat road, the West Virginia and Wyanoke. I overheard two gentlemen talking about it yesterday in Pocahontas, and one of 'em had been down to look at those worked-out coal fields at Wyanoke. 'If I wa'nt in as many schemes as I could float, I'd buy up a control of that road,' said the one who had been there, 'you mark my words, there's better coal in those fields than has ever come out of 'em.' They called him Huntley, and he said he'd been down with an expert."