“Spend it!” cried Don contemptuously. “Only silly people think money was made just to spend. Wise ones save it up for time of need.”
“The truly wise don’t hoard all they have, Don,” remarked Ada gravely.
“No; of course they must live, and they’ll pay their way honestly if they are the right sort of folks.”
“And if they are that,” said Mildred, with a sweet, bright smile irradiating her features, “they will feel that the money God gives them is not wholly their own, to save and to spend.”
“Oh no, to be sure! and what a nice big tenth you’ll have to give now, Milly,” exclaimed Annis. “I wish you’d find some work for me to do and pay me for it, so that I’d have more money to give to missions.”
“I’ll pay you ten cents for every hour you spend at the piano in faithful practice,” was Mildred’s answer, as she playfully drew her little pet sister to a seat upon her knee.
“O Milly! will you really?” cried the child, clapping her hands in delight; “but that will be twenty cents a day when I practise two hours, and I mean to, every day but Sunday.”
“And I make Fan the same offer,” Mildred said, catching a half wistful, half eager glance from the great gray eyes of that quiet, demure little maiden.
The gray eyes sparkled and danced, their owner saying, “O Milly, thank you ever so much! I’ll be sure to earn twenty or thirty cents every day.”
“Forty or fifty cents a day for you to pay, Milly!” Annis said in some anxiety.