Little Ben seemed to be running the matter over in his mind, for he was silent a long while. In rummaging among his recollections he found nothing pleasant, apparently, for when he turned his face to Silas it showed the quivering and pathetic distortion which precedes an open burst of grief.
"If you don't care," he said, "I believe I _will_ cry; I can't help it, since you told me about the lady."
The little fellow sobbed aloud at the recollection of his hard life, all the time trying to control himself, and wiping his eyes with his rough sleeve. He was such a picture of helpless grief that Silas Davy turned his back, and appeared to be rubbing something out of his eyes; first one and then the other.
"I am sorry I am not able to help you, Ben," the good fellow said, turning toward the boy again, after he had recovered himself; "but I am of so little consequence that I am unable to help anyone; I cannot help myself much. I have rather a hard time getting along, too, and I am a good deal like you, Ben, for, though I work all the time, I do not give much satisfaction."
Little Ben looked at his companion curiously.
"I thought you were very happy here, sir," he said, "with plenty to eat every day. You are free to go to the cupboard whenever you are hungry, but often I am unable to sleep because I am so hungry. You never go to bed feeling that way, do you, Mr. Davy?"
"No," he replied, almost smiling at the boy's idea that anyone who had plenty to eat must be entirely content; "but I am a shiftless sort of a man, and I don't get on very well. I always want to do what is right and fair, but somehow I don't always do it; I sometimes think, though, that I am more unjust to myself than to anyone else. It causes me a good deal of regret that I am not able to help such as you, Ben. If I were able, I would like to buy you a suit of clothes."
"Summer is coming on, sir, and these will do very well," the boy replied.
"Yes; but you were very thinly clad last winter, Ben, and oftentimes I could not sleep from thinking of how cold you were when out in the fields with the stock. If ever there was a good boy, you are one, Ben; but you are not treated half so well as the bad boys I know. This is what worries me, as hunger worries you."