“I know that,” James said. “But then, it would make me feel so happy to see her eating an orange that I bought for her with my own money. She is always doing something for us, or getting us some nice thing, and I should like to let her see that I don’t forget it.”
“You can do as you please,” was William’s reply to this. “For my part, I don’t often get money to spend for myself. And now I think of it, I don’t believe pa’ would like it if we were to take the pennies he gave us for ourselves, and give them away,—or, what is the same thing, give away what we bought with them. Indeed, I’m sure he would not.”
“I don’t think so, William,” urged James. “I think it would please him very much. You know that he often talks to us of the evil of selfishness. Don’t you remember how pleased he was one day, when a poor chimney-sweeper asked me for a piece of cake that I was eating, and I gave him nearly the whole of it? If that gave him pleasure, surely my denying myself for the sake of ma’, who is sick, would please him a great deal more.”
William did not reply to this, for he could not, very well. Still, he wanted to spend his pennies for his own gratification so badly, that he was not at all influenced by what his brother said.
In a little while, the two little boys came to a confectioner’s shop, and both went into it to spend their money.
“Well, my little man, what will you have?” asked the shop-keeper, looking at William, as he came up to the counter.
“Give me three pennies’ worth of cream candy,” William said.
The cream candy was weighed out, and then the man asked James what he should get for him.