“Oh they’re mighty sharp, ma’am, I can tell you,” said the carpenter.  “I never lost anything, because I don’t look as if I had anything worth stealing; but if one of those rascals made up his mind to rob me, ten to one he’d do it.”

Mr. Plank receipted his bill and Mrs. Hamilton paid him a hundred and eighty-seven dollars and fifty cents.  Ben could not help envying him as he saw the roll of bills transferred to him.

“I hope the work was done satisfactory,” said Mr. Plank. (Perfect grammar could not be expected of a man who, from the age of twelve, had been forced to earn his own living.)

“Quite so, Mr. Plank,” said the lady graciously.  “I shall send for you when I have any more work to be done.”

There was no more business to attend to, and Mrs. Hamilton led the way out, accompanied by Ben.

“I will trouble you to see me as far as Broadway,” said the lady.  “I am not used to this neighborhood and prefer to have an escort.”

“I didn’t think this morning,” said Ben to himself, “that a rich lady would select me as her escort.”

On the whole, he liked it.  It gave him a feeling of importance, and a sense of responsibility which a manly boy always likes.

“I shall be glad to stay with you as long as you like,” said Ben.

“Thank you, Benjamin, or shall I say Ben?”

“I wish you would.  I hardly know myself when I am called Benjamin.”

“As we are walking alone, suppose you tell me something of yourself.  I only know your name, and that you live in Pentonville.  What relations have you?”

“A mother only—­my father is dead.”

“And you help take care of your mother, I suppose?”

“Yes; father left us nothing except the house we live in, or, at least, we could get track of no other property.  He died in Chicago suddenly.”

“I hope you are getting along comfortably—­you and your mother,” said Mrs. Hamilton kindly.

“We have our troubles,” answered Ben.  “We are in danger of having our house taken from us.”

“How is that?”

“A rich man in our village, Squire Davenport, has a mortgage of seven hundred dollars upon it.  He wants the house for a relative of his wife, and threatens to foreclose at the end of three months.”

“The house must be worth a good deal more than the mortgage.”

“It is worth twice as much; but if it is put up at auction I doubt if it will fetch over a thousand dollars.”

“This would leave your mother but three hundred?”

“Yes,” answered Ben despondingly.

“Have you thought of any way of raising the money?”

“Yes; I came up to the city to-day to see a cousin of mother’s, a Mr. Absalom Peters, who lives on Lexington Avenue, and I had just come from there when I got into the stage with you.”

“Won’t he help you?”

“Perhaps he might if he was in the city; though mother has seen nothing of him for twenty years; but, unfortunately, he just sailed for Europe.”