were beginning to live in him. Jenny's girl's faith was
budding in his heart, and it would one day bloom. He was turning to the
right now, and he would advance. There are periods in some people's
lives when they do not write often to their best friends; such a one had
just passed with Ben. During the Governor Keith misadventures he had not
written home often, as the reader may well imagine. But now that he had
come back to Philadelphia and was prosperous, the memory of loving
Jenny began to steal back into his heart.

He had heard that Jenny, now at sweet sixteen, was famous for her
beauty. He may have been jealous of her, we do not know; but he was
apprehensive that she might become vain, and he regarded modesty, even
at his early age of twenty-one or twenty-two, as a thing very becoming a
blooming girl.

One day he wrote to her, "Jenny, I am going to send you a present by the
next ship to Boston town."

The promise filled the girl's heart with delight. Her faith in him had
never failed, nor had her love for him changed.

What would the present be?

She went to her mother to help her solve this riddle.

"Perhaps it will be a ring," she said. "I would rather have that from
Ben than any other thing."

"But he would not send a ring by ship," said her mother, "but by the
post chaise."

"True, mother; it can not be that. It may be a spinet. I think it is a
spinet. He knows how we have delighted in father's violin. He might like
to send me a harp, but what is a spinet but a harp in a box?"

"I think it may be that, Jenny. He would send a spinet by ship, and he
knows how much we all love music."

"Yes, and he must see how many girls are adding the music of the spinet
to their accomplishments."

"Wouldn't a spinet be rather out of place in a candle shop?" asked the
mother.

"Not out of place in the parlor of a candle shop," said Jenny with
dignity.

"Do you think that you could learn to play the spinet, Jenny?"

"I would, if Ben were to send me one. I have been true to Ben all along.
I have never given him up. He may get out of place in life, but he is
sure to get back again. A true heart always does. I am sure that it is a
spinet that he will send. I dreamed," she added, "that I heard a humming
sound in the air something like a harp. I dreamed it in the morning, and
morning dreams come true."

"A humming sound," said Josiah Franklin, who had come within hearing;
"there are some things besides spinets that