EARNING MONEY
"Now if I only had a camera," said Alice as she and Mary Jane and her grandmother were sitting out on the back porch one morning, shelling peas for dinner, "I'd take a picture of you both. Wouldn't it make a good one?"
Grandmother looked at Mary Jane. The sunshine splattered through the cracks between the vine-covered lattice and shone on her bobbed brown hair, on her pink play dress and on the bright green pea pods in her lap. Mary Jane looked at her grandmother and saw the snow white hair, the kindly face that smiled above the big work apron and the busy hands.
"Wouldn't it, though!" they both exclaimed at exactly the same minute. And then they all three had a good laugh.
"All the same I wish I had a camera," insisted Alice.
"Does your mother think you're old enough to know how to use one?" asked Grandmother.
"Old enough, Grandmother!" exclaimed Mary Jane. "Alice's twelve!" And the way she said twelve showed that she thought twelve was very, very old indeed.
Grandmother smiled and Alice added, "She's willing I should have one, Grandmother, only I must buy it myself. And saving money out of my allowance is slow work. I've a dollar now but I need seventy-five cents more."
"Seems to me you should be able to earn that much," said Grandmother.
"Earn it?" asked Alice. "How?"
"Oh, by some sort of work," answered Grandmother.
"Oh, could I really?" exclaimed Alice delightedly. "What could I do?"
"Could I earn some too?" asked Mary Jane eagerly.
"What do you want money for?" laughed Alice, as though a little girl wouldn't have use for such a thing as money! "You always want to do everything, Mary Jane!"
"Of course she does," said Grandmother comfortably, "and you do too. The thing I'm thinking about is more fun if done by two anyway. But what do you want your money for, dear?" she asked the little girl.
"I want it to get a present for my dear mother," said Mary Jane, "a present that she don't know anything about and that Daddah don't know anything about and that nobody gives me the money for. Can I really truly earn some money?"
"Surely," replied Grandmother. "See those woods, girls?" She pointed across the garden and across the cornfield to the woods about a quarter of a mile away. "In those woods are blackberry bushes, lots of them. And this is about the beginning of the blackberry season. Now if you girls really want to earn some money you may take your little baskets and go berrying. I'll buy all you can pick at ten cents a quart. You ought to easily get your seventy-five cents that way, Alice, for the bushes ate usually loaded with berries."
"But the berries are yours to begin with," objected Alice, who liked to be fair; "we can't sell you something that already belongs to you."
"Of course you can't," replied Grandmother, much pleased with Alice's honesty. "I shouldn't have said 'buy the berries'; I should have said 'pay you for the picking' at ten cents a quart. If I 'bought' the berries of any one I would have to pay fifteen or twenty cents a quart. And if I hired some one to pick them for me as I have some years, I would have to pay ten cents a quart, just as I offered you. So, you see, I promised you no more than you will fairly earn."
"How do you pick berries?" asked Alice.
"There's only one way," laughed Grandmother, much amused at the question. "You touch them and off they come! Just pick them off the bushes and drop them in your basket and the thing is done."
"Let's go now," said Mary Jane eagerly.
"Not now," answered Grandmother, "because it's too near dinner time. Wait till you have your dinner and a little rest of half an hour. Then you can start and pick all afternoon."
By two o'clock the girls had hunted up the berry baskets Grandmother told them to find in the attic (cunning little baskets with long, curving handles they were, too) and, tying on their biggest sun hats, they started out through the garden path.
They crossed the field, climbed the fence into the woods and turned down the wagon road as Grandmother had directed them. And sure enough, there were the berry bushes just as she had said. Bushes that were fairly loaded with shining blackberries that glistened in the afternoon sunshine.
[Illustration: "There were the berry bushes—fairly loaded with shining blackberries.">[
The girls set to work most enthusiastically and by the time Grandfather came to see how they liked their job (for, of course, he had heard all about it at dinner time) they had their baskets nearly full. He walked home with them and helped them measure out their berries with Grandmother's quart measure. Alice had a quart and a half and Mary Jane a full, even quart and Grandmother paid immediately—fifteen cents for Alice and ten cents, a bright new dime, for Mary Jane.
"My, but I do be rich!" exclaimed Mary Jane delightedly. "I can get my dear mother the nicest thing!"
"Of course you can, Pussy," said Grandfather, "and Alice will have her camera in no time. I get the best of all, though," he added with a mysterious nod of his head.
"How do you?" asked both girls at once.
"I get to eat the jam!" replied Grandfather in a comical attempt at a whisper.
"They do too, bless their hearts!" exclaimed Grandmother. They shall eat all they want. I'll make it first thing in the morning."
"And first thing in the morning I mean to get more berries," said Alice. "Let me see—fifteen into seventy-five:—in four more days I'll have enough money to get my camera!" And she danced around gayly, she was so delighted.
"Not quite," laughed Grandfather; "don't be in too big a hurry, Blunderbuss; you have to give the berries a chance to ripen. Better plan to go every other day. You'll get more at a time that way."
"And I'm going, too," put in Mary Jane, "so I can get more money for Mother's present."
"I was thinking about that present while you girls were gone," said Grandmother. "You'd better get that present in the city where the stores are good. Why don't you save it for her Christmas gift? That would be nice."
"But I wanted to give her something when she comes to take me home!" objected Mary Jane, who had set her heart on making her mother a gift, "something that I did."
"That's all right," Grandmother assured her; "give her something then, too. Something you made yourself and save the money you earn till Christmas. How would you like to make her some blackberry jam? She likes blackberry jam and you could make that."
"Could I really?" exclaimed Mary Jane, and she sidled over to where her grandmother was standing.
"How silly!" cried Alice. "You know she can't make jam, Grandmother; she's only five years old. Why, even I don't know how to make jam and I'm twelve!"
"Is that so?" laughed Grandmother, and she slipped her arm around Mary Jane. "Well, what you can do and what Mary Jane can do has no connection. You don't know what she can do. She's going to be a good cook; she's begun already. And if she wants to make a glass of jam for her mother, all by herself, she shall do it, so there! And you can make some, too, if you want to, dear," she added kindly to Alice.
"Thank you, Grandmother," said Alice, "and I'm sorry I spoke so about you, dear," she added to Mary Jane; "go ahead and make your jam, pet, and I'll make Mother something else. I know it would be more fun for you to make it without me. May I make her a cake, Grandmother? Make it the day before she comes?"
Grandmother assured her that she could and they all went in to get supper.
The next morning Mary Jane put on her cooking cap and apron and she and Grandmother went at the jam while Alice and Grandfather rode to the village on an errand.
"Measure out a good big cup full of berries," said Grandmother; "pile it full as it will hold and wash them and put them in this pan."
Mary Jane picked out nice big, juicy berries; that wasn't hard to do because most of the berries were very fine; the girls hadn't picked any other kind. Then she washed them carefully and put them in the pan Grandmother had given her.
"Now measure an even cupful of sugar," said Grandmother, "and pour it over your berries." And Mary Jane went to the sugar bin and did as she was told.
"Now," continued Grandmother, "shake the berries till the sugar's well mixed in and then set the pan on the stove."
While the berries were cooking Grandmother had her hunt out a nice jelly glass, one that the top fitted on firmly; wash and dry it ready for the jelly. Then Mary Jane took a big spoon and Grandmother took a big spoon and they stood by the stove and watched the jam boil. When the bubbles got big, oh, very big, and looked as shining as big glass beads, Grandmother said it was about done and must be tested. She put her spoon in and then, holding it over the pan of jam, let the hot jam drop off.
"Almost done," said Grandmother, with a satisfied nod; "now you try it, Mary Jane."
So Mary Jane dipped her spoon in just as her grandmother had done and again the jam dropped off, this time a little slower and with longer drops. Grandmother told her to put the glass on a chair, on a paper, and by the time she had done that the jam was ready to pour into the glass.
When Alice and Grandfather came home from their errand the glass of jam was all done and was on the table near the window, covered neatly with its tin cover ready to give to Mrs. Merrill when she should come.
"And that won't be so many days now either," said Grandmother. "I declare, how this summer has gone!"