"Well, ma," observed Chinky, "I'd rather see you with the money than trying to fly with wings. Only think how you'd look! I bet your feet'd drag."
"Young man, if you'd use your eyes more and your tongue less, why then instead of making fun of your poor old mother you'd be learning a lesson from this tree before we take it out."
"What'd I learn?"
"You'd learn how Christmas trees is trimmed. I think we ought to take pattern by this so's we'd know how to get up our own."
"Sure enough, ma, I'll run home and get a pencil and a piece of paper and I'll draw that tree just as it stands, so we'll know where to hook up the strings of pop-corn, and the paper trimmings, and have a tree that is a tree."
Chinky was gone but a short time and soon finished three remarkable sketches which he put in his pocket for future use.
"We'll have a Christmas this year that'll make up for lost time," said Mrs. Mulvaney, smiling at Chinky through clouds of dust. "I believe we shall have to take everything in this room out-doors if we ever expect to get this place clean. How it all comes back to me the way my mother used to do things. We better shut up the piano, though I don't know so much about this kind as I do about another."
"You used to call your wash-board a piano, didn't you, ma?" Chinky remarked.
"So I did, and that ain't saying's I liked the music of it, either, still, who knows but our Hannah'll be learning to play this—I mean, to play a sure enough piano some day. And Chinky, how'd you like to go to college?"
"Why, Ma Mulvaney!"