all right, Grant," answered Mrs. Bowman, relapsing into
her lifetime silence.

It was nearly three months later and spring was at its full, before they
discharged little Ben from the hospital. But the last fortnight of his
stay they had let him visit outside the hospital for a few hours daily.
And to the joy of a great crowd in the Hot Dog saloon, he sat on the bar
and sang his little heart out. They took him down to Belgian hall at
noon, and he sang the "Marseillaise" to the crowd that gathered there.
In the hospital, wherever they would let him, after he had visited the
Hot Dog, he sang--sang in the big ward where he sat by a window, sang in
the corridors, whenever the patients could hear him, and sang Gospel
hymns in his cot at bedtime.

He was an odd little bundle, that Henry Fenn carried into the offices of
the Wahoo Valley Fuel Company one afternoon in early June, with Dick
Bowman following proudly, as they made the proof of the claim for
compensation for the accident. The people in the offices were kind and
tenderly polite to the little fellow. Henry saw that all the papers were
properly made out, and the clerk in the office told Dick and Henry to
call for the check next day but one--which was pay day.

So they carried little Ben away and Mrs. Bowman--though it was barely
five o'clock--began fixing Ben up for the wedding of Jasper Adams and
Ruth Morton. It was the first public appearance as a singer that little
Ben had made in Harvey. His appearance was due largely to the notion of
Captain Morton, supported and abetted by George Brotherton. So little
Ben Bowman was smuggled behind a palm in the choir loft and permitted to
sing "O Promise Me" during the services.

"Not," explained the Captain to Mr. Brotherton in the barn where he was
smoking, the afternoon before the ceremony, "not that I cared a whoop in
Texas about Ben--though 'y gory, the boy sings like a canary; but it was
the only excuse I could find for slipping a hundred dollars to the
Bowman family, without making Dick and Lida think it was charity--eh?"

The wedding made a dull evening for Grant. He carried little Ben in his
arms out of the crowd at the church, and gathering up the Bowmans and
his father, went home without stopping for the reception or for the
dance or for any of the subsidiary attractions of the ceremony which
Jasper and the Captain, each delighting in tableaux and parades, had
arranged for. Little Ben's arm was clinging to Grant's