n. "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 h