Benefits Forgot | Page 4

Inchpin arrived.
"Heard Jason had some new magazines in hand. Don't s'pose you could
lend me a few, over night?"
Jason's mother was in the kitchen. It was donation party night and she
had been cooking all day in preparation.
"Surely, surely," said Jason's father, picking up the pile of magazines.
"Jason can't get at them before the end of the week. Take them and
welcome."
Mr. Inchpin rode away. Jason came in with the milk pail and the family
sat down to a hasty supper.
"Won't I have a minute of time to look at my magazines, mother?"
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