nce he went away some seven months before, and they, though
grieved at his conduct, received him joyfully. There was always an open
door in Abiah Folger's heart. The Quaker blood of good Peter Folger
never ceased to course warm in her veins.

Ben told his marvelous story. After the literary adventures of Silence
Dogood in Boston, his parents could believe much, but when he came to
tell of his intimacy with Sir William Keith, Governor of the Province of
Pennsylvania, successor to the great William Penn, they knew not what to
think. Either Sir William must be a singular man, or they must have
underrated the ability of young Silence Dogood.

"This is great news indeed. But what proof do you bring of your good
fortune, my son?" asked the level-headed Josiah, lifting his spectacles
upon his forehead and giving his son a searching look.

Young Benjamin took from his pocket the letter of Sir William and laid
it before his father. It indeed had the vice-royal seal of the province.

His father put down his spectacles from his forehead, and his wife Abiah
drew up her chair beside him, and he read the letter to himself and then
reviewed it aloud.

The letter told him what a wonderfully promising young man Benjamin was;
how well he was adapted to become the printer of the province, and how
he only needed a loan wherewith to begin business to make a fortune.

Josiah Franklin could not doubt the genuineness of the letter. He sat
thinking, drumming on a soap shelf.

"But why, my boy, if you are so able and so much needed does not
Governor Keith lend you the money himself?"

Ben sat silent. Not all the arts of the Socratic method could suggest
any answer to this question.

"I am glad that you have an influential patron," said Josiah, "but to a
man of hard sense it would seem very strange that he should not advance
the money himself to help one so likely to become so useful to the
province to begin business. People are seldom offered something for
nothing in this world, and why this man has made himself your patron I
can not see, even through my spectacles."

"He wishes, father, to make me a printer for the advancement of the
province."

"Then why, my son, should not a governor of a rich province himself
provide you with means to become a printer for the advancement of the
province?"

Socrates himself could not have answered this question.

"Did you tell him that your father was an honest, hard-working soap
boiler and ca