Billy stooped to tie shoestrings already tidy; he was gaining time for thinking. “I reckon doing things you don’t like is work, and doing things you do like is play,” he explained, doubtfully.
“But some people like their work, don’t they?” May Nell persisted. She was exploring strange country.
“I guess so. Teacher says every live thing that’s happy works; birds, flowers, children; that those that won’t work shouldn’t eat. He says the greatest joy is to do the work you like best as well as you can.”
“I’ve never worked,” May Nell said reminiscently; “but there’s one hard thing I’ve done—I’ve kept very still when mama has her headaches.”
“Gee whack! That’s the hardest work of all,” Billy complimented.
Edith came in dressed for church.
“My conscience! How lovely and stylish you look!” The child, accustomed to elegant dress, praised with discriminating eyes.
When brother and sister left her, strange thoughts flitted through her head. She heard Mrs. Bennett beating eggs in the kitchen; saw the logs Billy had piled in the wood-box. On the wall above the piano hung Edith’s schedule—time table, Billy called it. May Nell had already studied it, had seen the fifty or more lessons set for each week; and needlework on the music table, and books there the child had discovered were for music study,—these told her what a busy woman Billy’s sister must be.
Yet it was very strange, they were all happy! Happier, she felt, than her own mother with maids and money, gems, rich gowns, and her motor car at command. Why was it? “Those that won’t work shouldn’t eat.” Could that be true? Then she should not eat, for she never worked. She wondered how it would seem to work.
Full of her thought she slipped from the couch, and went to the kitchen. “Mrs. Bennett, haven’t you some work a little girl could do?”