Page:Her Benny - Silas K Hocking (Warne, 1890).djvu/78

54 much more plentiful at this time of the year than at any other time was to him a mystery. Poor little fellow! the thought never seemed to enter into his small head that it' might be that, people's hearts were more open at this festive season than at some other times. However, Benny was not one that speculated long on such questions; he only wished that people were always as ready to have their bags carried, and always gave their pence as ungrudgingly.

Once or twice he felt a bit sad, and brushed away a hasty tear, when he saw boys no bigger than himself wrapped up in great warm overcoats, and beautiful little girls with fur-trimmed jackets and high-heeled dainty boots, clasped in the arms of their parents as soon as they stepped from the ferry, and then hurried away to a cab or to a carriage in waiting—and then thought of his own cheerless life. "I specks they's mighty 'appy," he said reflectively, and then walked away to the other end of the stage, where he thought he saw the chance of employment.

On Christmas Eve Benny took his sister through St. John's Market, and highly delighted they were with what they saw. The thousands of geese, turkeys, and pheasants, the loads of vegetables, the heaps of oranges and apples, the pyramids of every other conceivable kind of fruit, the stalls of sweetmeats, the tons of toffee, and the crowds of well-dressed people all bent upon buying something, were sources of infinite pleasure to the children. There was only one