Milly laughed, for she had heard of Jim's plans, and of the various objects which were to be benefited by the "peanut-undertaking;" and, as frequent new claims and claimants appeared to share in the profits, she argued that the proportion of each would be small.
"Jim," she said, "I think I would not undertake to help the Yorkes as well as all the other people you have upon your list. They shall not be allowed to suffer, you may be sure; Mr. Rutherford and Mr. Livingstone will see to that."
"Miss Milly," he answered, reproachfully, "I on'y didn't reckon up Captain Yorke an' his folks before, 'cause they hadn't need of it. Now they will, with all that raft of broke-up children on 'em; an' do you think I'd go to passin' 'em over when they was so good to me? No, that I wouldn't; I ain't never goin' to forget how Mis' Yorke nussed me, an' made much of me, when I was sick there in her house; an' they were good to me, too, when I was a little chap, an' got shipwrecked on to the shore. Miss Milly, do you know,"—hesitatingly,—"I'd liever take some out of the 'lection expenses share, than to pass over the Yorkes. I would, really, Miss Milly."
Truly, our Milly was reaping a rich fruit of generosity, loyalty, and earnest endeavor, from the seed of self-sacrifice and charity which she herself had shown in faith and hope. And this, too, in ground which the on-lookers had judged to be so hardened and stony that no harvest was to be gathered therefrom. Oh, my Milly, sweet soul,
"Great feelings hath she of her own,
Which lesser souls may never know."
CHAPTER IV.
"FOOD FOR THE GODS."
Behold our household now settled in our city home,—our summer by the sea, with all its many pleasures, and its measure of perplexities and anxieties, a thing of the past; our stay at Oaklands, where papa had enjoyed himself to his heart's content, all the more for his enforced absence of the previous months, also over; and the different members of the family, according to his or her individual taste, occupied with divers plans and projects for the winter's duties and diversions.