Chapter I: Bennie’s Home

It was very cold down in the old lumber yard which skirted the canal, and Bennie’s little hands were numb and blue as he gathered the bits of boards and shingles and piled them in his basket, until it seemed as if so small a boy as he could not lift the heavy load. But Bennie was used to burdens and hardships; indeed, he would hardly have known himself without them, and when the basket was full he took it in both his hands and walked slowly along the towpath towards the miserable hovel he called his home. As he came near the bridge a young lady was going up the stone steps which lead to the street above, and with her was a little boy just Bennie’s age, but so different in looks and dress and general appearance that one could not fail to notice the contrast at once. Clad in a warm winter suit of the latest style Wallie Morgan knew nothing of cold or hunger and cruel neglect, and the sight of Bennie, with his ragged clothes and old slouched cap roused the boy nature and he called out, “Halloo, there, tow-head! What are you stealing chips for from my father’s lumber yard? I mean to tell him of you, Mr. Out-at-the-knees.”

“Hush, Wallie!” said the young lady whose face was very sweet, “you should not speak so to the little boy. He looks very poor and very cold. Come here, boy, and tell me your name and where you live.”

She held her hand towards the child, who was scowling defiantly at Wallie, but who, at the sound of her voice, seemed intuitively to recognize an ally in her, and replied: “He ’allus calls me tow-head, or out-at-the-knees, ’cause my hair’s white and my trouses is tore. I can’t help it, I didn’t make myself.”

“Who did make you?” the young girl asked, and Bennie replied, “I dunno, mother’s dead and pa gets drunk. I dunno nothing.”

“Don’t know who made you! That’s dreadful,” the lady said. “Why, you poor child, you must come to Sunday school and into my class and I will tell you about God. Will you come next Sunday? It is the church on the corner.”

“Will _he_ be there?” Bennie asked, nodding towards Wallie.

“Yes, he is in my class, and I am his Aunt Nellie; but he will be very kind to you. He is not a bad boy. Come, and perhaps you may get something at Christmas. Do you know what that is?”

“Yes, it’s when the old chap fetches things down the chimbly; but he never brung me none. We’re poor, and Hetty keeps house and runs the streets all the time, and Mag and I is alone. I’ll tell Maggie, and mayby she’ll come. She’s got a new gown Miss Katy give her. I must go now, we are goin’ to have hasty puddin’ for dinner.”

He took his heavy basket and almost staggering under the load walked slowly away. As usual at that time of day Hetty was out, but Maggie, a dark faced girl of twelve, was waiting for him, and with her help a fire was soon kindled in the old broken stove, and the hasty pudding, of which Bennie had spoken, was boiling and bubbling in the one kettle the miserable house afforded.

“I wish we had some ’lasses, don’t you?” Bennie said, as Maggie poured into his dish more than half of the blue milk she had begged of a neighbor.

But molasses was a luxury quite beyond the means of the Hewitts, and so Bennie ate his pudding and skimmed milk, and told Maggie of Wallie Morgan who had called him tow-heard and of the beautiful lady who had invited him to Sunday school.

“Yes that’s Nellie Morgan, his aunt; his mother’s dead, and she keeps house and has a class, a big one, in Sunday school, and give Jane Shaw a doll and a dress and lots of candy and pop-corn last Christmas, and her brother Tim got a top and a whip.”

“My, that’s jolly; less go to her class next Sunday,” Bennie said, his fancy caught with the top and the whip, and the shoes which would keep his little red toes from the cold.

But Bennie was a delicate child and when Sunday came he was sick and lay on an old rug in a little room off from the kitchen where he was safe from his drunken father, while Maggie went to church and into Miss Morgan’s class.

That day was a new era in Maggie’s life, and unmindful of the bitter cold which struck through her thin garments and made her shiver involuntarily, she hurried home to Bennie with the picture card she had received and the wonderful story she had heard of Jesus’ birthday and the baby born among the cows and oxen in that far off manger in Bethlehem. Wonderingly Bennie listened, asking innumerable questions about the child; was he ever cold, or hungry, and was he afraid of the cattle, and did his father get drunk and thrash him? To all these inquiries Maggie answered no decidedly, but when Bennie asked if he really could hear what every body said and would give them what they wanted, Maggie was doubtful. She thought, however, they better try it, and so the two forlorn little ones knelt down as Maggie said they did in church and tried to pray. But neither knew what to say and when Bennie suggested that his sister ought to know “’cause she’d been to meetin’,” she answered, “I know they said Our Father, I am sure of that.”

But Bennie scoffed at this idea, “That baby in the hay our father! Why, pa is drunk down to the grocery!”

As well as she could, Maggie explained, drawing some from her imagination, some from what Miss Morgan had told her, and some from faint remembrances of a time when her mother, who died at Bennie’s birth, had taught her of God and Heaven. Half convinced, half doubtful still, Bennie tried again, and said, “Our Father, if you is my father, and was oncet a little boy like me, give me something to eat and some gooder trouses and shoes, and a pair of lines on the tree when you have your birth night.”

“For Christ’s sake; say that,” Maggie whispered, and Bennie rejoined, “Who’s he! I shan’t do it. I’m not goin’ to get ’em mixed, I’ll stick to Our Father.”

And surely the good Father, who is so kind and pitiful to the little ones, heard that prayer of the ignorant child, and would in His own time and way answer it.