Page:Her Benny - Silas K Hocking (Warne, 1890).djvu/112

88 nothing about it; for experience had made her quick to detect his every mood.

One afternoon^ as Benny was passing along a narrow and not very frequented street^ he paused before a small hosier^s shop. A great many things had been hung outside the door to catch the eye of the passer-by. But one article especially attracted his attention, and that was a woollen "cross-over."

"Golly!" he said to himself, "if Nelly only had that, she'd be better in no time."

Nelly had been much better that morning, and but for the keen east wind that had been blowing for several days, she would have again ventured into the streets. And as Benny looked again and again at the cross-over, he thought how nice she would look with it crossed over her chest, and how nice and snug and warm it would make her feel. No cold, he was sure, could come through a thing like that; and it was the cold, granny said, that made her cough so much.

But he knew he could not purchase it, so with a sigh he turned away. Yet in less than half an hour he was standing before the shop again.

"They would never miss it," he muttered to himself, "an' Nelly needs it so much."

Then a voice within him whispered, "Don't steal, Benny," and again he walked away. But the tempter followed and gave him no rest.

"I could cut the string as easy as that,'* he said to