Tiny and Johnny each received ten cents a week for spending money, and it did not take them long to decide that, if Uncle Isaac would sell them three quarts of milk a week, and lend them a milk can, they would send that milk, if it took every cent of their allowance. Uncle Isaac entered into the plan with spirit; if they took three quarts of milk a week “straight along,” he said, it would only be four cents a quart, and he would lend them a can, and deliver it, with pleasure.
“But that would be skimmed milk, wouldn’t it, Uncle Isaac?” asked Tiny, doubtfully.
“Oh no,” he answered, “not at all! It shall either be from the milking over night, with all the cream on it, or, if Johnny chooses, I’ll call him in time to milk the three quarts that very morning—perhaps that would be best, for then some of it would keep till next day, if Mr. Thorpe could find a cold place for it.”
The children were jubilant. There would still be eight cents a week left, and they admitted to each other that it would have been “very bad” to be reduced to “nothing at all a week!” And Johnny agreed at once to do the milking. He had been learning to milk “for fun,” and could do it quite nicely.
“And that’s a real blessing, Tiny,” he said, “for the milk will be so nice and fresh, as Uncle Isaac says, that Mr. Thorpe can keep some till next day. I do hope he has a refrigerator.”
You will begin to see, by this time, that the things which these little people were doing by way of sharing their happiness, were not by any means all play, and that some of them were very downright work. Picking berries in the hot sun, or even flowers, when one picks them by the bushel, is not amusing. It always seemed to Johnny, on the milking mornings, that he had only just fallen asleep when Uncle Isaac gave him the gentle shaking which had been agreed upon, because a knock or call would wake the rest of the family needlessly early. Very often most interesting things, such as building a dam, or digging a pond, or making a house of fence rails, had to be put aside for hours, that the “consignment,” whatever it happened to be that time, might be ready for Uncle Isaac over night. But how sweet and happy was the play which followed their labors of love, and how small their sacrifices seemed, when they thought of the little children, crowded, packed, into narrow, foul-smelling courts and alleys, and, inside of these again, into stifling rooms!
The long rambles, in which Mrs. Leslie always, and Mr. Leslie sometimes, joined, in search of mosses and wild-flower roots, were only a delight, and quite paid for the work of printing the simple rules for cheap cookery, which Aunt Mercy told them from time to time, as she could remember.
They caught Uncle Isaac, nearly every time that he took one of their cargoes, slipping in something on his own account—vegetables, or fruit, or eggs, and even, sometimes, a piece of fresh meat, when one of his own sheep had been killed to supply the table.
