ome.

"'Suppose, Johnny,' says she, one day, 'we cut off some of our luxuries,
and save up to buy somethin' nice for poor father agin he comes home!' I
was struck favorable with the idee of the present, but what luxuries was
to be cut off I didn't see clear.

"There's the candle, for one thing!' says mother. 'Taller's taller, at
the best o' times; and the few chores I do at night I can do just as
well by the light of a pine-knot.'

"Butter, she said, wa' n't healthy for her, nor milk, nor meat, nor
sugar, nor no such things, so it would all be easy enough for her. She
only hesitated on my account. But I spoke up ever so brave. 'I don't
mind,' says I; 'it'll be good fun, in fact, just to see how leetle we
can live on!' And I think yet my mind was some expanded by that
experience,--it driv me to such curus devices. At fust I took leetle
bites off my cake, and leetle sips of my porridge; but I found a more
effective plan afore long, for looks goes a good ways, and even when we
deceive ourselves it kind o' helps us. Well, I took to hevin' my
porridge in a shaller plate, so that there seemed twice as much on 't as
there really was, and to hollerin' my cake out from the under side, so
that, when it was reduced to a mere shell, it still represented what it
wa' n't; a trick that I found to work very slick, especially when I
imagined Rose a-lookin' at my shaller plate, and not knowin' how deep it
was.

"'Won't we hev a beautiful surprise, though, for poor father!' my mother
would say, when my spoon touched bottom, and it always touched bottom
premature; and then we would talk of what we should buy, and I would be
carried away like, and forget myself.

"A fur hat was talked on in our fust wild enthusiasm, but that idee was
gin up arter we'd gone about among the stores; and we settled final on
't a pair o' square-toed brogans, with nails in the heels on 'em.

"'Let 'em be good sewed shoes, and not peg,' says my mother, when she
give the shoemaker his order, 'and make 'em up just as soon as possible.
You see my husband may be here any day now; and we mean to hev a great
surprise for him,--Johnny and me.'

"The shoemaker, to my surprise,--for I expected him to enter into it
with as much enthusiasm as we,--hesitated, said he was pressed heavy
with work just then, and that he thought she had best go to some other
shop! I didn't understand the meanin' on 't at all; but my mother did,
and told him she could pay him aforehand, if