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This will account for Esther's next remark being, "Now, dears, no fighting to-day. We must celebrate Benjy's return. We ought to kill a fatted calf like the man in the Bible." "What are you talking about, Esther?" said Benjamin suspiciously. "I'm so sorry, nothing, only foolishness," said Esther. "We really must do something to make a holiday of the occasion.
First Benjy's life was in danger, and now my own," and the impulsive girl seized his hand and squeezed it, nor did the boy care just then how vigorously she showed her gratitude. The servants now came running up, looking frightened; and remembering his message Dick handed his note to the agitated lady.
"Yes, dear," said Elizabeth; "but thank God I must have been very wrong about the portmanteau. The outside-porter told me that he brought it up from the station to Major Benjy's house half an hour ago. Fancy your not knowing that! I feel sure he is a truthful man, for he attends the Padre's confirmation class.
She had tried, when, at the conclusion of her supper, she had gone back to the garden-room, to immerse herself in a book, in an evening paper, in the portmanteau problem, in a jig-saw puzzle, and in Patience, but none of these supplied the stimulus to lead her mind away from Major Benjy's evenings, or the narcotic to dull her unslumbering desire to solve a problem that was rapidly becoming one of the greater mysteries.
He evidently possessed something of the ancient Inquisitor spirit, and gloated over the pains of his victim! The result was that Oolichuk not only quivered from head to foot, but gave a little jump and anything but a little yell. Benjy's powers of self-restraint were by that time exhausted.
The old man had at last apparently brought the tin box of private papers that he wished the miller to take charge of during Derriman's absence; and it being a calm night, John could hear, though he little heeded, Uncle Benjy's reiterated supplications to Loveday to keep it safe from fire and thieves.
It is great fun to look at a jingling match certainly, and Tom shouts and jumps on old Benjy's shoulders at the sight, until the old man feels weary, and shifts him to the strong young shoulders of the groom, who has just got down to the fun.
"Churchyard mould," said the old iron-gray man, with another chuckle. And so they said their good-byes and went their ways home. Tom's wart was gone in a fortnight, but not so Benjy's rheumatism, which laid him by the heels more and more.
Followed by Benjy's adoring eyes, he started out of the door, and I followed him perforce. We came to the little church, of upright logs and plaster, with its crudely shingled, peaked roof, with its tiny belfry crowned by a cross, with its porches on each side shading the line of windows there.
"Now, lads," continued the Captain, with the air of a man who propounds a self-evident proposition; "is it not clear that if the warm waters of the south flow into the Polar basin as an under current, they must come up somewhere, to take the place of the cold waters that are for ever flowing away from the Pole to the Equator? Can anything be clearer than that except the nose on Benjy's face?
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