ed since they first found out it was
really scarlet fever Minnie had, and I have been in No. 4 again. She is
going away to spend a week with Miss Webb. Going to-morrow.

I am so glad she is going. All of us are glad, for she has had to do
something which shows whether you are a Christ-kind Christian or the
usual kind, and she is tired out. She won't admit it, though, and laughs
and kisses her hand over the banister, which is all the closer we have
seen her yet.

Miss Bray was scared to death. She didn't offer to share the nursing,
but she made excuses a-plenty for not doing it. Miss Bray is a church
Christian. You couldn't make her miss going to church. She thinks she'd
have bad luck if she did.

VIII

MARY CARY'S BUSINESS

This is a busy time of the year, and things are moving. I'm in business.
The Apple and Entertainment business.

The reason I went in business was to make money, and the money was to
buy Christmas presents with.

I didn't have a cent. Not one. Christmas was coming. Money wasn't. And
what's the use of Christmas if you can't give something to somebody?

Religion is the only thing I know of that you can get without money and
without price, and even that you can't keep without both. Not being
suitable to the season, I couldn't give that away, even if I had it to
spare, and wondering what to do almost made me sick.

I thought and thought until my brain curdled. I looked over everything I
had to see if there was a thing I could sell. There wasn't. I couldn't
tell Miss Katherine, knowing she'd fix up some way to give me some and
pretend I was earning it; and then, one day, when she was out, I locked
myself in her room, and Martha gave Mary such a spanking talk that Mary
moved.

Everything Martha had suggested before, Mary had some excuse for not
doing. Mary is lazy at times, and, as for pride, she's full of it.
Martha generally gives the trouble, but Mary needs plain truth every now
and then, and that day she got it. When the talk was over, there was a
plan settled on, and the plan was this.

Each day in December we have an apple for dinner. Mr. Riley sends us
several barrels every winter, and, as they won't keep, we have one
apiece until they're gone.

We don't have to eat them at the table, and when Martha told Mary you
could do anything you wanted if you wanted to hard enough--except raise
the dead, of course--the idea came that I could sell my apple. And right
away came the though