His mother flushed a little. "So it is! My goodness, Jason! Print makes a heathen of me and you're most as bad. You haven't fed the horse or milked."
"So I won't get a look at it till tomorrow," cried Jason, bitterly.
Mrs. Wilkins glanced toward the closed door that led into the sitting room. Then she looked at Jason's wide brown eyes, at the round-about she had cut over from his father's old sermon coat, at the darned stockings and the trousers that had belonged to the rich boy of the town they had lived in the year before.
"Jason," she said, "you ought to get plenty of sleep because you're a growing boy. But a thing like this won't happen for years again—and—well, I've saved up several candle ends, hoping to get some sewing done nights when your father was using the lamp. When you go up to bed tonight, take those and read your magazine."
"But you ought to keep them," protested Jason.
"Not at all," exclaimed his mother, vigorously, "it's all for your education. Run along now and milk."
So Jason reveled in his Harper's Monthly, and the next day as he wiped the dishes for his mother, he produced his great idea.
"If I can earn the money, this summer, mother, can I subscribe to Harper's Monthly for a year?"
"My goodness, Jason, it's five dollars and this is the first of August! School begins in a month."
"I know all that," replied Jason impatiently, "but if I earn the money can I have it for Harpers Monthly?"