brown
house.

But she had met life too bravely to be beaten down now. So with a stout
heart and a cheery face, she had worked away day after day at making
coats, and tailoring and mending of all descriptions; and she had seen
with pride that couldn't be concealed, her noisy, happy brood growing
up around her, and filling her heart with comfort, and making the little
brown house fairly ring with jollity and fun.

"Poor things!" she would say to herself, "they haven't had any bringing
up; they've just scrambled up!" And then she would set her lips together
tightly, and fly at her work faster than ever. "I must get schooling for
them some way, but I don't see how!"

Once or twice she had thought, "Now the time is coming!" but it never
did: for winter shut in very cold, and it took so much more to feed and
warm them, that the money went faster than ever. And then, when the way
seemed clear again, the store changed hands, so that for a long time she
failed to get her usual supply of sacks and coats to make; and that
made sad havoc in the quarters and half-dollars laid up as her nest egg.
But--"Well, it'll come some time," she would say to herself; "because it
must!" And so at it again she would fly, brisker than ever.

"To help mother," was the great ambition of all the children, older
and younger; but in Polly's and Ben's souls, the desire grew so
overwhelmingly great as to absorb all lesser thoughts. Many and vast
were their secret plans, by which they were to astonish her at some
future day, which they would only confide--as they did everything
else--to one another. For this brother and sister were everything to
each other, and stood loyally together through "thick and thin."

Polly was ten, and Ben one year older; and the younger three of the
"Five Little Peppers," as they were always called, looked up to them
with the intensest admiration and love. What they failed to do, couldn't
very well be done by any One!

"Oh dear!" exclaimed Polly as she sat over in the corner by the window
helping her mother pull out basting threads from a coat she had just
finished, and giving an impatient twitch to the sleeve, "I do wish we
could ever have any light--just as much as we want!"

"You don't need any light to see these threads," said Mrs. Pepper,
winding up hers carefully, as she spoke, on an old spool. "Take care,
Polly, you broke that; thread's dear now."

"I couldn't help it," said Polly, vexedly; "it snapped; everyth