le Jason, "I s'pose
there's some butter ready to take. Now what do you want?"

"Oh, my! What I don't want would be less. Some of that green and white
gingham, spools of thread, shirting muslin good and stout, and Jenny
said if anyone went over there was a list of things she wanted. It's in
her machine drawer."

"Oh, I never can look after so much. Come mother, go along yourself."

"On Sat'day afternoon! Jason Mulford!"

"Well you can't go on Sunday," and he laughed.

"Yes, I could go over to church on Sunday," she retorted sharply. "Thank
the Lord there's one day you don't have to cook from morning to night,
though like the old Israelites you have to do a double portion on
Sat'day. Dear me, I sometimes wished we lived on manna."

"What is manna?" inquired 'Reely.

"Bread and honey," said her father.

"No, twan't bread and honey either. Jason, why do you say such things!
It's what the children of Israel had to live on forty years in the
wilderness, and they got mighty tired of it too. It's my opinion, 'Reely
Mulford, you'd rather have bread and cake and potpie and baked beans and
berries and such."

'Reely stared with her big brown eyes.

"And--didn't they have any----"

"You're big enough to read the Bible, 'Reely. When I was twelve I had
read it all through, except the chapters with the names which mother
said didn't count. But we didn't have Sunday school books then, and that
was all there was to read on Sunday."

Helen thought everything that happened to Aunt Jane happened before she
was twelve. She had made her father some shirts, she had pieced several
quilts, made bread and cake and spun on the little wheel and could do a
week's washing.

"Well, about Hope?" They seldom said North Hope, or tacked Hope on to
the Center.

"Oh, I couldn't go."

"Well, I can't get all those things. See here, let Helen go."

Aunt Jane looked at her. Helen knew by experience that to want a thing
very much was a sure way of being denied, so she merely went to the
machine drawer and brought the list Jenny had written out, in which were
several mispelled words.

"O Lordy!" ejaculated Uncle Jason.

"Before all these children too! No one would think you were a church
member, Jason," said his wife severely.

"Well, if you want all them things you'll have to send Helen along to
remember. An' I dunno's I have time."

Uncle Jason rose from the table. So did the hired man and Sam. Helen
picked up the list and put it bac