Ben Sylvester's word Author:Charlotte Mary Yonge Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: common, they kept a pony, a cow or two, some pigs, ducks, geese, and poultry; and they drove a small trade with the Barons- bridge cottagers and the town of Aldr... more »ing- liam. They were not very noted for honesty or scrupulousness, but their traffic was a great convenience, and as they were close and saving, they were thought to have made a good deal of money. The old man was now dead, and1 his wife was beginning to fail, so that she required a boy to help in the care of her animals. She gave very small pay, and bore so poor a character, that none of the village people who could do better for their children would let them hire themselves out to her; but Betty Sylvester's children had done worse things than that for a livelihood, and as it was only in a great press of work that one of "they Syl'sters" had any chance of being taken on by a respectable fanner, Ben was not sorry when old Mrs. Walcot called to him over her gate, to askif he were willing to tend her cow and pony at two-pence a day. The very first Saturday he carried the money to Mr. Conroy. Perhaps the clergyman had not expected it to come so punctually, for he looked pleased and surprised, saying, " That's a good boy! I think you are improving, Ben. You may turn out a good steady fellow at last, like your brother, the soldier." Ben quite blushed with pleasure. Had he ever been called a good boy before? Certainly not in that sense, though his mother sometimes said "there's a good lad," when she wanted him to- leave off some great piece of mischief, and Jacob Long had hallooed out "that's a good one," when he jumped right over the widest water-carriage in the meadows. Keeping Mrs. Walcot's cow and pony was a life that he did not dislike at all. It suited his wild habits to go straying after them over the common, ...« less