The Fairchilds by Lucy Ellen Guernsey

"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."