"They seem to thrive on it," Mrs. Fernald replied tartly. And in truth both the boys were sturdy little specimens of humanity, in spite of their luxurious food.
"It's bad for them. Makes them break out. Bad for the blood. And self-denial is good for children. 'It is better to bear the yoke in thy youth.'"
The youth in question spread its butter more thickly, and ate it with satisfaction, saying nothing.
"Here, boys!" she suddenly assailed them. "If you will go without butter for a year—a whole year, till I come round again—I'll give each of you fifty dollars!"
This was an overwhelming proposition.
Butter was butter—almost the only alleviation of a dry and monotonous bill of fare, consisting largely of bread. Bread without butter! Brown bread without butter! No butter on potatoes! No butter on anything! The young imagination recoiled. And this measureless deprivation was to cover a whole year. A ninth or an eleventh of a lifetime to them respectively. About a fifth of all they could really remember. Countless days, each having three meals; weeks, months, the long dry butterless vista stretched before them like Siberian exile to a Russian prisoner.
But, on the other hand, there was the fifty dollars. Fifty dollars would buy a horse, a gun, tools, knives—a farm, maybe. It could be put in the bank, and drawn on for life, doubtless. Fifty dollars at that time was like five hundred to-day, and to a child it was a fortune.
Even their mother wavered in her resentment as she considered the fifty dollars, and the father did not waver at all, but thought it a Godsend.
"Let 'em choose," said Miss McCoy.
Stern is the stock of the Granite State. Self-denial is the essence of their religion; and economy, to give it a favorable name, is for them Nature's first law.