Benefits Forgot | Page 4

asked Jason. "O, I hate donation parties!"
"Jason!" thundered his father. "Would you show ingratitude to God? And the books are not here anyway. I loaned them to Mr. Inchpin."
"Father!"
"O Ethan!"
Brother Wilkins' eyes were steel gray, instead of blue. "Jason can read his Bible until the end of the week. His ingratitude deserves punishment."
Jason rushed from the table and flung himself sobbing into the hay loft. His mother found him there a few moments later.
"I know, dear! I know! It's hard. But father doesn't love books as you and I do, so he doesn't understand. And you must hurry and get ready for the party."
"I don't want the donation party, I want my magazines," sobbed Jason.
"I know. But life seldom, so very seldom, gives us what we want, dear heart. Just be thankful that you will be happy at the end of the week and come and help mother with the party."
As donation parties go, this one was a huge success. Fully a hundred people attended it. They played games, they sang hymns, they ate a month's provisions and Mrs. Wilkins' chance of a new dress in the cake and coffee she provided. They left behind them a pile of potatoes and apples that filled two barrels and a heap of old clothing that Jason, candle in hand, turned over with his foot.
"There's Billy Ames' striped pants," he grumbled. "Every time his mother licked him into wearing 'em, I know he prayed I'd get 'em, the ugly beasts, and I have. And there's seven old patched shirts. I suppose I'll get the tails sewed together into school shirts for me and there's Old Mrs. Arley's plush dress--I suppose poor mother'll have to fix that up and wear it to church. Why don't they give stuff father'll have to wear, too? I wonder why a minister's supposed to be so much better than his wife or son."
"What's that you're saying, Jason?" asked his father sharply as he brought the little oil lamp from the sitting room into the kitchen. Mrs. Wilkins followed. This was a detestable job, the sorting of the donation debris, and was best gotten through with, at once. Jason, shading the candle light from his eyes, with one slender hand, looked at his father belligerently.
"I was saying," he said, "that it was too bad you don't have to wear some of the old rags sometimes, then you'd know how mother and I feel about donation parties."
There was absolute silence for a moment in the little kitchen. A late October cricket chirped somewhere.
Then, "O Jason!" gasped his mother.
The boy was only twelve, but he had been bred in a difficult school and was old for his years. He looked again at the heaps of cast-off clothing on the floor and his gorge rose within him.
"I tell you," he cried, before his father could speak, "that I'll never wear another donation party pair of pants. No, nor a shirt-tail shirt, either. I'm through with having the boys make fun of me. I'll earn my own clothes every summer and I'll earn mother's too."
"You'll do nothing of the sort, sir," thundered Jason's father, his great bass voice rising as it did in revival meetings. "You'll do nothing but wear donation clothes as long as you're under my roof. I've long noted your tendency to vanity and mammon. To my prayers, I shall begin to add stout measures."
Jason threw back his head, a finely shaped head it was with good breadth between the eyes.
"I tell you, sir, I'm through with donation pants. If folks don't think enough of the religion you preach to pay you for it I'd--I'd advise you to get another religion."
Under his beard, Ethan Wilkins went white, but not so white as Jason's mother. But she spoke quietly.
"Jason, apologize to your father at once."
"I couldn't accept an apology now," said the minister. "I shall have to pray to get my mind into shape. In the meantime Jason shall be punished for this. Not until everyone in the town who desires to read his Harper's Monthlies has done so, can Jason touch them."
"O father, not that," cried Jason. "I'll apologize! I'll wear the pants! Why, it would be Christmas before I'd see them again!"
"I can't accept your apology now. Neither your spirit nor mine is right. And I cannot retract. Your punishment must stand."
Jason was all child now. "Mother," he cried, "don't let him! Don't let him!"
Mrs. Wilkins' lips quivered. For a moment she could not speak. Then with an inscrutable look into her husband's eyes she said:
"You must obey your father, Jason. You have been very wicked."
Jason put down his candle and sobbed. "I know it. But I'll be good. Let me have my magazines. They're mine. I paid for them."
"No!" roared the minister. "Go to bed, sir, and see