Uncle Ben put the tongs in the chimney nook, and said:

"There is a bunch on your arm, Ben."

"No, no, no, uncle."

"There is, and it moves about."

"I have no wound, or boil, nor anything, uncle."

"There it goes again, or else my head is wrong. There! there! Abiah, stop spinning a minute and come here."

The wheel stopped. Abiah, with a troubled look, came to the hearth and leaned over it with one hand against the shelf.

"What has he been doing now?" she asked in a troubled tone.

"Look at his arm there! It bulges out."

Uncle Ben put out his hand to touch the protrusion. He laid his finger on the place carefully, when suddenly the bunch was gone, and just then appeared a little head outside the sleeve.

"I told you that there was something there! I knew that there was all the time."

There was--it was the little covey or guinea pig.

"What did I tell you before Ben came in?" said Uncle Benjamin.

Little Ben did not know what his uncle had said to his mother before he opened the door; but he heard him say now mysteriously:

"It is a cold day for shelterless things. That little bunch on his arm ill.u.s.trates what I mean by personality. There are more guinea pigs than one in this cold world."

Abiah went to her wheel in silence, and it began to buzz again.

Little Ben went into the room where his father was at work.

The wheel stopped.

"I do love that boy," said Abiah, "notwithstanding all the fault they find with him."

"So do I, Abiah. I'm glad that you made him my G.o.dson. All people are common in this world except those who have personality. He had a great-uncle that was just like him, and, Abiah, he became a friend of Lord Halifax."

"I am afraid that poor little Ben, after all his care of the guinea pig, will never commend himself to Lord Halifax. But we can not tell."

"No, Abiah, we can not tell, but stranger things have happened, and such things begin in that way."

CHAPTER VII.

UNCLE TOM, WHO ROSE IN THE WORLD.

LITTLE Ben had some reasons to dread the visits of his two stately aunts from Nantucket, the schoolmarms, whom his mother called "the girls."

But one November day, as he came home after the arrival of the stage from Salem, he was met at the door by his uncle with the question:

"Who do you think has come?"

"I don't know, uncle. Josiah?"

"No."

"Brother John from Rhode Island? Esther and Martha from school? Zachary from Annapolis?"

"Not right yet."

"Esther and Martha from school at Nantucket?"

"Yes; and your Aunt Hannah and Aunt Prudence have come with them, with bandboxes, caps, snuffboxes, and all. They came on the sloop. It is a time for little boys to be quiet now, and to keep guinea pigs and such things well out of sight."

"How long are _they_ going to stay, uncle?"

By "they" he referred to his aunts.

"A week or more, I guess. This will be your still week."

"But I can not keep still, uncle; I am a boy."

Little Benjamin went into the home room and there met his stately aunts, the school teachers.

There was a great fire in the room, and the pewter platters shone there like silver. His aunts received him kindly, but in a very condescending way. They had not yet discovered any "personality" in the short, little boy of the numerous family.

The aunts delighted in imparting moral instruction, and they saw in little Ben, as they thought, a useful opportunity for such culture.

That night the family, with the aunts from Nantucket, sat down by the great fire under the shining platters to hear Uncle Benjamin relate a marvelous story. Every family has one wonder story, and this was the one wonder story of the Franklin side of the family. Uncle Benjamin wished the two "aunts" to hear this story "on his side of the house."

"There was only one of our family in England who ever became great, and that was my Uncle Thomas," he began.

"Only think of that, little Ben," said Aunt Hannah Folger, "only one."

"Only one," said Aunt Prudence Folger, "and may you become like him."

"He was born a smith, and so he was bred, for it was the custom of our family that the eldest son should be a smith--a Franklin."

"Sit very still, my little boy," said the two aunts, "and you shall be told what happened. He was a smith."

"There was a man in our town," continued Uncle Ben, "whose name was Palmer, and he became an esquire."

"Maybe that _you_ will become an esquire," said Aunt Esther to Ben.