"That may be, my boy; but I want you to get along better than well enough."
This little conversation made quite an impression on Harry, and he talked to Kate about it.
"I suppose father's right," said she; "but what's to be done about it? Is that poor old woman to have only half enough to eat, so that you may read twice as much Virgil?"
Harry laughed.
"But perhaps she will have five-eighths of enough to eat if I only read nine-sixteenths as much Latin," said he.
"Oh! you're always poking arithmetic fun at me," said Kate. "But I tell you what you can do," she continued. "You can get up half an hour earlier, every morning, and that will give you a good deal of extra time to think about your lessons."
"I can think about them in bed," said Harry.
"Humph!" said Kate; and she went on with her work. She was knitting a "tidy," worth two pounds of sugar, or half a pound of tea, when it should be finished.
Harry did not get up any earlier; for, as he expressed it, "It was dreadfully cold before breakfast," on those January mornings; but his father and mother noticed that the subject of Aunt Matilda's maintenance did not so entirely engross the conversation of the brother and sister in the evenings; and they had their heads together almost as often over slate and schoolbooks as over the little account-book in which Kate put down receipts and expenditures.
On a Thursday night, about the middle of January, there was a fall of snow. Not a very heavy fall; the snow might have been deeper, but it was deep enough for sledding. On the Friday, Harry, in connection with another boy, Tom Selden, several years older than himself, concocted a grand scheme. They would haul wood, on a sled, all day Saturday.