many errands for mothers who had plenty of boys of their own; and
he seemed to be called on in any sort of trouble or danger, when the
fathers were up-town, and was always chasing pigs or cows out of other
people's gardens, and breaking up their hens from setting, or going up
trees with hives to catch their bees when they swarmed.

I suppose this was how he came to be trusted with that pocketful of money,
and why he had a young brother along to double his care at the time.

The money was given him in the city, as the Boy's Town boys always called
the large place about twenty miles away, where Frank went once with his
mother when he was eleven years old. She was going to take passage there
on a steamboat and go up the Ohio River to visit his grandmother with his
sisters, while Frank was to go back the same day to the Boy's Town with
one of his young brothers.

They all drove down to the city together in the carriage which one of his
uncles had got from the livery stable, with a driver who was to take Frank
and his brother home. This uncle had been visiting Frank's father and
mother, and it was his boat that she was going on. It lay among a hundred
other boats, which had their prows tight together along the landing for
half a mile up and down the sloping shore. It was one of the largest boats
of all, and it ran every week from Cincinnati to Pittsburgh, and did not
take any longer for the round trip than an ocean steamer takes now for the
voyage from New York to Liverpool.

The children all had dinner on board, such a dinner as there never was in
any house: roast beef and roast chicken; beefsteak and ham in
chafing-dishes with lamps burning under them to keep them hot; pound-cake
with frosting on, and pies and pickles, corn-bread and hot biscuit; jelly
that kept shaking in moulds; ice-cream and Spanish pudding; coffee and
tea, and I do not know what all.

When the children had eaten all they could hold, and made their uncle
laugh till he almost cried, to see them trying to eat everything, their
mother went ashore with them, and walked up the landing towards the hotel
where the carriage was left, so as to be with Frank and his little brother
as long as she could before they started home. She was about one of the
best mothers in the Boy's Town, and Frank hated to have her go away even
on a visit.

She kept giving him charges about all the things at home, and how he must
take good care of his little brothers, and see tha