"Yes, sir," emphatically declared Harper, all out of breath from his exercise; "I want forty cannons."
"Mercy!" ejaculated Aunt Nancy, in smothered accents, over in the corner by the window, with her mending basket.
"Well, then, I'll tell you how you can get it," said Mr. Smith, speaking very earnestly, and fastening his eyes intently on their faces.
"Really, papa?" cried Lucy, sitting up straight on his knee.
"Really," said Mr. Smith, bringing his hand down on the arm of his chair with convincing emphasis. "And I don't mind paying money for such an object—it's well spent, I can tell you. Now, boys, see here—and Lucy too;" and he leaned forward and began to talk in a way that made the children see that this was no funning, but sober earnest, every word of it. "If you all go to work for three weeks, beginning to-morrow morning—all the time you get out of school, I mean—and study up everything you can get hold of that concerns the history of our country: what Fourth-of-July's for, and all that; who made the country what it is, so that we can celebrate and bang away, and play with powder and guns— Stop! I haven't got through," as he saw both boys' mouths fly open to launch numberless questions at him. "Begin at the very foundation; get all the information you possibly can; find out all the names of the Presidents, for one thing, and all about the establishing of Congress; most of the principal battles, and all that—why, then, three weeks from to-morrow night, the one who knows the most, and can tell it in a sensible way that shows he knows what he's learned, and not like a parrot, he shall have the most money. And it shall be a large sum, I promise you, compared to what you had last year. That's all. Now you may speak." And Mr. Smith leaned back in his chair, and burst into a hearty laugh at the tumult he had raised around his ears.
At last Harper, in a lull of questions and answers that were flying back and forth, turned and fixed a reproachful glance over in the direction of the big mending basket. "'Twas all Aunt Nancy," he cried. "Oh dear! And she wasn't never a boy. And she don't know how we want things, she don't."
"We never can do it," cried Joe, in despair.
"Never's a long word," cried Mr. Smith, briskly. "Begin to-night. Come, boys, get out the maps, and we'll start right off, now, this very minute;" and he jumped up, and began to roll the big table up closer to the window.
"And I'm goin' to get that awful old history," cried Harper, rushing out, full of enthusiasm; "that'll tell lots."
"Do," cried his father, approvingly. "Go along too, Joe and Lucy, and get all the books you can; then we'll see."