s for the home, fill them
with ferns and try to sell them when she went into the town with the
berries. It meant getting up at four instead of five, but she could do
that. It meant getting the ferns when the rest of the children were
playing at lunch time--but that wasn't hard. And after her first day in
town she had fifty cents to put into the cup. Oh, how rich she felt!

An extra quart of berries here and there, some flowers sold from her
little garden patch on the hill, two little kittens sold instead of being
drowned--and so the money in the cup grew very, very slowly and no one
dreamed it was there. But her dream grew with the contents of the cup. She
could see herself all dressed in a neat dress going up the hill to the
school and the little children following her and calling her teacher.

But in August, George fell from the hay-mow and for days he lay there
white and still. Mother had done all she could and there was no money to
send for the doctor. Then it was that a little black-haired girl went out
in the shed and for the first time counted the money in the cup--one, two,
three, four, five, six, almost seven dollars. Long she looked at it. Then
she went into town to do the errand for her mother and five of the
precious dollars were counted into the hands of the doctor with the
repeated statement,

"Tell mother that you happened to be going by and just stopped, so all she
needs to pay you is a dollar, for she has that."

So mother never knew, nor did the sick boy know, of the sacrifice the girl
had made. Auntie came and went, and because it was winter the money in the
cup hardly increased one bit. Sometimes she was almost discouraged, but
then she would say to herself,

"Why, it took years and years for Abraham Lincoln to get to the White
House. It doesn't matter if it takes twenty years. I am going to get to
that schoolhouse. I will be a teacher."

She could crochet and she could embroider, so these helped a bit. She
planted more things in her own garden and the money from these was her
own. So again as the summer drew to a close, she knew there must be
several dollars in the cup--but she daren't count it, for if it should be
ten and still she couldn't go--oh, that would be worse than all!

It was five days before school was to open that there came a letter from
grandmother saying that she was coming to stay for the winter, and while
mother was happy over this, Janie asked if she might not be spared to g