Chapter IV: Eben Displays His Accomplishments

"WELL, as Mrs. Antis has no girl," said Eben to himself while dressing, "I suppose she would like to have me come up and make a fire for her. I will just lay everything ready for Flora and bring in a pail of water, and then be off."

Eben was so early that he found the house and barn locked, and nobody stirring.

"What shall I do now?" said he, after he had knocked once or twice without receiving any answer. "Well, here is a hoe, and here are some potatoes that clearly need hoeing, and that, as Miss Hilliard would say, naturally suggests the idea of going to work to hoe them. So here goes."

Mr. Antis, roused by the sound of Eben's hoe, and looking out of the window, saw what the boy was about. He opened the window and called to him:

"Never mind the potatoes now, Eben. I'll throw you out the key of the stable, so you can water and feed the horses, and by that time I will be down stairs."

"Very well, sir," said Eben, picking up the key. "I only went at the potatoes because there didn't seem to be anything else to do. I guess I haven't done them any harm."

"I guess not, by the looks. He'll do," said Mr. Antis as he finished dressing. "A boy that goes to hoeing potatoes, because he can't find anything else to do, will make his way in the world. However, new brooms sweep clean, and it is early time yet."

"I would have made the fire for Mrs. Antis, only I couldn't get in," said Eben as Mr. Antis met him on the door-step. "I have been here some time."

"Time enough, my boy. Mrs. Antis is only just up. You may make the fire now, and finish the horses afterwards. You seem to understand how to go to work with them."

"Yes, my father always let me take the care of poor Fancy," said Eben, with just a little huskiness in his voice at the thought of the beautiful "Morgan," his own particular property which had gone with the rest of Mr. Fairchild's stock. "I love horses dearly, they are such knowing, willing creatures. It seems too bad the way they are abused sometimes. I don't see how any one can abuse a dumb beast."

"I am glad you feel so, and I quite agree with you, Eben. I would never keep a boy that I found abusing or overdriving a horse or cow."

"I don't believe he will keep Tom Wilbur long, then," was Eben's thought, but he did not express it. Before he went home to his breakfast, he had fed the horses, milked, brought in wood for the day, swept off the walk, and put on a kettle of dish-water. Mrs. Antis smiled when she came across this proof of the boy's thoughtfulness.

"I hardly ever had a girl who would remember to do that," she said to her husband. "But I must not count too much on Eben, for I know that just as surely as he shows himself good for anything, you will be for getting him away from me."

There was not a little talk among Mrs. Fairchild's friends and Eben's former schoolmates when it was discovered that Eben had really gone to work, not in the mill, which was considered a very good place, but as Mr. Antis's "hired boy." Some people wondered how Mrs. Fairchild could allow such a thing, and Mrs. Badger said Anne Fairchild never would have thought of it, if the boy had been her own.

"Mr. Fairchild always considered Eben the same as his own," said her daughter, "and Flora thinks there is nobody in all the world like Eben."

"Yes, but then you see Eben isn't their own flesh and blood. It speaks well for the boy, anyhow, after his expecting to be Mr. Fairchild's heir, and to go to college, and what not."

"I wonder Mr. Antis didn't take him into the mill instead of Tom Wilbur," said Mrs. Badger, junior. "Tom ain't no more account than a towstring."

"I believe Mr. Wilbur got the promise from Mr. Antis before Eben saw him," remarked Miss Emily Willson, who was in the company. "Perhaps Tom will do better in different hands."

"Maybe so. His father does have a kind of discouraging way with him, that's a fact," said Grandma Badger. "But I expect Tom is a good deal what his father was at his age—always finding fault with his business and wanting to try something else. That was always the way with Joe Wilbur, and that was the reason he never got on any, and you will see Tom will be just such another one as he was."

"Let us hope for better things in Tom's case," said Miss Emily, smiling. "Flora told me that her mother would not hear of this arrangement at first, but Eben was so very anxious to be doing something for himself that she gave way, and allowed him to do as he pleased."

"They are real good, smart children, both of 'em," said Grandma Badger. "Folks said Eben was too young to join the church, but I don't see any of our members that walk any more consistent than he does. For my part, I think all the more of the boy that he has gone to work at whatever he could find to do, to help along his mother and sister, instead of waiting for something to turn up that just suited him."

"Then, if it was the right thing for Eben to do, grandma, why should you blame his mother for telling him to do it?" asked young Mrs. Badger, rather mischievously.

The old, lady took a pinch of snuff, and drew herself up.

"You see, Malviny, I ain't so smart as you be, and sometimes I say foolish things. The apostle says, 'If any man offend not in word, the same is a perfect man,' and I don't seem to have come to that pint of perfection just yet, though maybe I shall if I live eighty years longer."

"You come about as near it as most of us, I guess, grandma," said the younger lady, who had only meant to draw out her mother-in-law, and so the conversation was happily ended.

Of course Eben's conduct had been discussed at the school, where he had always been a great favourite with both teacher and scholars.

"The Fairchilds have come down in the world," said Martha Edwards, with a toss of her head, "to let Eben go out to work like a common hired man. I guess they won't hold their heads quite so high after this."

"Why not?" asked Alice Brown.

"Oh, because nobody thinks anything of hired men or girls."

"I don't know that," said Elsie Dennison; "my mother thinks as much of Maggy Saddler as if she was one of the family."

"That's different," said Martha.

"And Joseph Antis respects Eben," said Alice Brown. "He told my father so, for I heard him. He said he thought more of Eben than ever."

"It must have been pretty hard on Eben to give up school and go to work," said David Brown, "so fond as he was of study. If it had been thee now, Henry, thee wouldn't have minded half so much."

"I know it," said Henry Wilson. "I'd rather work three hours in the hayfield the hottest day that ever was, than one over the Latin grammar or Virgil, while Eben reads Virgil just for fun. He never will stop at the end of the hundred lines. He always wants to read on and see how the story turns out. I told father last night I wished I was in Eben's place, and he in mine."

"Why, Henry Willson! And you the minister's son. I should think you would be ashamed!" exclaimed Martha Edwards, with her favourite toss of the head.

"What did thy father say to that?" asked David.

"He laughed, and said I must be as faithful in doing my work as Eben was in doing his, and there was no telling what would happen. I don't think Eben has very hard times with Mr. Antis. Look at him now, driving the old gray! He looks as well satisfied as if he owned the whole concern."

"That shows how much Mr. Antis thinks of him," said Osric Dennison. "He never would let Jerry Blythe drive the old gray. He thinks as much of that old horse as if it were a man."

"Good reason why, when it carried him all through the wars," said David. "But I don't think, boys, you need be in any hurry to pity Eben, or to look down on him, either. I guess you will find he will come out about as well as any of us."

Eben, on his part, did not find his place at all an unpleasant one. He had a good many different things to do, which used up his time and kept him busy, but none of them were hard or disagreeable, and some of them were very much to his taste. Especially did he like taking care of the garden. Eben had always been very fond of flowers, and Mrs. Antis had a beautiful collection of them. One day, Eben observed to her that the flower-beds needed weeding.

"Yes, the plants are getting smothered out of existence," said Mrs. Antis, "but I seem to get no time to attend to them."

"I might weed them this afternoon, if you like," suggested Eben. "The rain has softened the ground, so the weeds can be got up without disturbing the other things."

Mrs. Antis looked doubtful. "I don't know about setting you to work at my flower-beds, Eben. When boys get to weeding, they are apt to pull up plants as well as weeds."

"I guess I sha'n't do that," said Eben. "I weeded the onions all out yesterday, and I don't think I pulled up many of the plants."

"I dare say you will do it very well," said Mrs. Antis. "Anyhow, the poor plants might as well be pulled up, as run out by the weeds. I believe I am very ungracious, Eben, but the truth is I am so tired I can hardly breathe."

"No wonder, with so much company and all the work to do," said Eben. "I'm afraid you will be down sick if you don't get some one to help you. I wish I could do more. I don't believe but that I could get the breakfast as well as not, if you would only tell me what you want. Come, Mrs. Antis! Now, you lie in bed to-morrow morning, and let me try."

Mrs. Antis smiled in rather a tearful fashion, for she was nervous, and, as she said, fairly worn out.

"Why, Eben, I should think you had enough to do already without turning cook. I feel sometimes as though you were rather put upon."

"I'm not afraid of being put upon," said Eben. "I like to see how much I can do. Well, then, I'll go at the flower-beds, if you can just step out and show me a little."

Eben had not been long engaged when Tom Wilbur came into the garden, and with a very ill-used expression went to work hoeing some sweet corn which grew out far from the flower-beds.

"So you are going to gardening too?" said Eben, cheerfully.

"I suppose so," returned Tom, sullenly. "There's nothing doing in the mill, and I was just going off fishing, when the boss came in and sent me out here to hoe this plaguy corn. I declare, I won't stand it! So!" and Tom struck viciously at a large weed, cutting off instead a stalk of corn.

"Take care! You won't do much good that way," said Eben. "I should think you would like working in the garden for a change. I do."

"Well, it ain't very pleasant for a fellow to be bossed round all day, and never have a chance for any fun," said Tom, still more sulkily. "I don't believe any one would like it. I hate the whole thing, anyhow. I wanted to do something different. I wanted my father to get me a place in a store at Hobartown, and he might have done it, too, just as well as not."

"Why didn't he, then?" asked Eben.

"Oh, I don't know. Some bothering nonsense about my being out of the way of temptation. I should have done well enough, but how can I do anything here, when I hate the whole concern?"

"You will have to do as the old Indians did," said Eben.

"What do you mean?" asked Tom.

"It is a story my father used to tell," said Eben. "One time late in November, when there was snow on the ground, a party of Indians came and camped out in the edge of the Long Woods, near my grandfather's house, and two or three days after the old gentleman said to his son, 'Come, let us go down and see the Indians, and find out how they are off for provisions. I dare say they haven't too much to eat.' So down they went, father carrying a basket of apples. The first person they came across was an old Indian, who was sitting on the end of a log gnawing a piece of cold corn-cake, which looked as if it might have been a week old. Do you like that?' asked my grandfather."

"The old man stopped eating, and answered, with a great deal of gravity and dignity, 'He's my wittle, and I will like him!'"

"Humph!" said Tom, guessing the application of the story.

"Father used often to quote the old man's answer to Flora and me when we complained of what we had to do," continued Eben, busily going on with his work meanwhile; "and I often think of it, and say to myself, 'He's my wittle, and I will like him.'"

"I don't see the sense of it, anyway," said Tom, though he did see well enough.

"The sense is plain," returned Eben. "If you can't do what you like, the next best thing and anyhow is to like what you do, and anyhow if you keep on doing the best you can, you almost always learn to like it."

"I never shall learn to like this place, I know, and I don't care whether I do or not," said Tom. "It isn't any place for me, and I don't see what father wanted me to come here for, anyhow. Jeduthun Cooke bosses me round, and tells me to do this and that, and when I say anything to Mr. Antis, all the good I get is, 'Oh, ask Jeduthun; he'll tell you what to do.'"

"But, Tom, if you were clerk in a store, you'd have to be ordered round by somebody quite as much as you are now. You would have to be on your feet all day, and called here and there by everybody. I have been shopping with mother at Hobartown, and in the city, too, sometimes, and I thought people were very provoking. They called the clerks this way and that, and made them pull down heaps of things, and then wouldn't take anything, after all. It was just having fifty bosses instead of one. I am sure Jeduthun is always good-natured."

"Good-natured! Yes, very much! You ought to have heard him scold this morning, just because I left the office alone a few minutes to run out and speak to one of the boys; and I haven't a minute for any fun from morning till night."

"I thought you had all last Saturday?"

"Well, that was only once."

"One whole day in three weeks is pretty well, I should say. I'll be bound you wouldn't have as much as that in Hobartown. Come, Tom, make the best of it, like a man. You might try twenty times and not get so good a place."

But Tom could not be comforted. He wanted to do something different. The mill was dirty, and he had to wear overalls from morning till night, and it wasn't very pleasant to work hard all day, and be ordered round by Jeduthun Cooke. He didn't like it, and nobody wanted to do what they didn't like. Mr. Antis had no business to make him hoe corn and potatoes. That wasn't what he was hired for, and he wasn't going to stand it.

"If you don't do any work only just as long as it is easy and you like it, you won't accomplish much," said Eben. "Every kind of work is hard, if you have to earn your living by it, and goes wrong sometimes. I like to study better than to do any kind of work, but if I had my living to get by it, I should grow tired of it a great many times, I know."

"You may preach till you are gray, Eben Fairchild, and you won't make me like milling a bit better, or think things are pleasant when they are not," said Tom. "How nice you have made those beds look!" he added, struck with sudden admiration at the result of Eben's labour. "There is some fun in work like that."

"It is hard work, though," returned Eben, straightening himself up, "harder work than hoeing corn, though it pays when it is done. I believe I haven't broken off a single plant. There goes five o'clock. I must go and make the fire for Mrs. Antis."

"Why, you don't do kitchen work, do you? I shouldn't like that."

"I'm not particular. I do anything that needs to be done," said Eben. "I guess my dignity won't suffer, and if it does, I guess it may just get well again."

The next morning, as Eben was putting on the tea-kettle, Mr. Antis came into the kitchen with a very disturbed face.

"I don't know what we are to do about breakfast, Eben," said he. "My wife can't get up this morning. She is completely worn out."

"I was afraid she would be," said Eben. "She will have to get a woman to help her."

"That is easier said than done, my boy. I have inquired of everybody about here and in Hobartown, and I can't get a girl for love nor money. I heard of one at the Springs yesterday, and I will let you drive over there by and by to see about her, but meantime, what are we to do about breakfast?"

"Oh, I can got breakfast," said Eben, cheerfully. "I have done it before now, when mother was not very well and Flora was away. Never you mind, Mr. Antis. If you will see to the horses, I'll get up some kind of a meal."

Mr. Antis laughed, and went off to the barn. Eben bustled about grinding coffee, slicing potatoes to fry, and setting the table. Presently, he called Mr. Antis, who came in to find a very respectable breakfast of ham and eggs, potatoes, and coffee, while a nicely-covered tray stood on the table ready to be carried up stairs. Eben was just toasting some bread.

"Well, I declare!" said Mr. Antis. "Where did you learn so much?"

"Oh, I have watched the women folks a great many times," answered Eben, busily turning his bread. "You sit down and eat your breakfast, and when I get this done, I'll just run down and get Kissy Cooke to come up for a while."

"But you must have your own breakfast, my boy."

"Well, I guess maybe I had better not go home to breakfast, there is so much to do. I'll just ask Tom to stop and tell mother I can't come, so that she won't wait for me."

Kissy left her work and came up from the mill long enough to make the sick woman comfortable, but she could not stay to do the housework. One of the patients for whom she washed at the Cure was going away at two o'clock, and Kissy had two white dresses to do up and get over to the Springs by twelve.

"Such fixings, and puffs, and ruffles, and what not!" said Kissy. "However, I ought not to complain, for I get a dollar apiece for doing 'em. But, mercy! How any one can wear such a lot of stuff! I'll just go down and get some warm water for you, Mrs. Antis, and put the room to rights, and then I don't see but I shall have to go."

Keziah went down stairs, and came up laughing.

"You never see such a sight in your life, Mrs. Antis. There's that boy Eben doing up the work as steady as an old woman—washing the dishes, cleaning the knives, and all. He puts water in the spiders to let 'em soak, and fills up his dish-kettle as fast as he takes the water out, all as regular as you please. 'Why, Eben,' says I, 'are you turned cook?'"

"'Oh, I can turn my hand to anything,' says he, as cheerful as a lark."

"I never did see such a boy."

"I am sure I never did," said Mrs. Antis. "I don't know what in the world I should have done without him this summer. I have had so much company, and nobody to help me."

"Seems to me, if I was company where there was no help, I should turn to and be help myself," remarked Keziah.

"Well, I did think Matilda Benedict might at any rate have offered to help me, but she never did," said Mrs. Antis. "Must you go now, Keziah?"

"Why, yes, I don't see but I must, on account of those dresses. If the lady wasn't going away, I would put her off, but there's just where it is, you see. However, I'll run in as soon as I get back."

"I think, perhaps, I can get up by and by," said Mrs. Antis. But she did not get up that day nor the next. Eben found time before he went in search of a girl to run down to his mother's and tell the state of the case.

"Do tell!" said Mrs. Fairchild. "And she there all alone! It's too bad, ain't it? Why don't some of the neighbours go in?"

"I suppose they are all busy with their own affairs," said Eben. "I don't know what we shall do if this girl don't come, for the bread is all gone, and I am sure I can't bake."

"Do tell!" said Mrs. Fairchild, again. "I declare, I've a great mind to go up there myself and stay till somebody comes."

"Do, mother," said Flora. "You are such a good nurse, and I am sure Mrs. Antis would do as much for us any day."

"That she would, or for anybody else," said Eben. "I wish you could go up, mother. It would be such a comfort to them."

"Well, I believe I will," said Mrs. Fairchild. "You can take care of yourself, can't you, Flossy?"

"Oh yes, indeed," replied Flora, smiling.

"Well, I must be off," said Eben. "I hope to bring the girl back with me."

Eben was disappointed. The girl was willing to work for Mrs. Antis, but could not come till next Monday, when she promised faithfully to make her appearance. Eben went back to find his mother established as nurse and housekeeper, mixing a batch of bread, and attending to her patient between times.

"It don't much matter," said she when she heard Eben's report. "I guess I'll just stay on till the girl comes, anyhow. 'Tain't much to do the work where everything is so convenient. You pick some peas, Eben, and I can be shelling them, while my bread is rising."

Eben had never seen his mother so animated and cheerful since the change in her circumstances, and he went about his work rejoicing. Mrs. Antis grew rapidly worse instead of better, and Mrs. Fairchild had her hands full.

"Never mind the dishes, ma, I'll take care of them," said Eben. "You just attend to Mrs. Antis."

"Well, I declare! Before I'd be a kitchen drudge and wash dishes," said Tom Wilbur, coming in to see what Eben was about, "I'd see the whole concern at the bottom of the pond before I'd do it!"

"Would you? Well, I wouldn't. I'd do more than this for Mr. Antis. I can't say it is work that I should choose, but I am willing to do anything to help."

"Well, I shouldn't think it would be very pleasant," said Tom. "Suppose any of the boys should come in and see you! But you haven't a bit of spunk, Eben; you are willing to let any one drive you."