Worth his While by Amy Ella Blanchard — Read

Benny was not a saint by any means. He was just as full of faults as many other boys, but he had a warm, generous heart, and had been carefully brought up, so, even if he was not always as thoughtful as he might be, and sometimes forgot to be promptly obedient, he was at least truthful, honest, and pure in heart, a fact which made the boys in his neighborhood call him "old Particular," or "old Partick" for short. He was used to pretty rough company sometimes, but he had never been thrown with quite such a crowd as that which surrounded him in the strawberry patch. Coarse, boorish men, vixenish, loud-voiced women, who jostled and elbowed him at times, the younger ones teasing and badgering him in queer broken English.

It was not very pleasant work to stoop over the vines with the sun beating down on his head, and his fingers becoming weary of the constant picking. Therefore the first half a day Benny did not make much headway, and was glad enough when twelve o'clock came, and the pickers trooped to their quarters, leaving Benny to find his way to the house, where he was to take his meals in the kitchen with the farm hands. A coarse, but plentiful meal, was provided; it consisted of bacon, cabbage, and corn bread, and Benny was hungry enough to eat heartily.