“Certainly, you may. I am simply, you know, trying to work up the idea of liberal giving among the boys.”
“A most excellent idea,” said his uncle, concealing his amusement at Phil’s rather pompous tone. “Let me see: Bananas, twenty-five cents; soda water, ten cents; peanuts, twenty-five cents; bat, thirty-five cents; candy, fifteen cents; base-ball cap, seventy-five cents; Sunday-school, six cents——”
“Oh, stop, Uncle George; that isn’t in it! That’s when I was visiting at Cousin Tom’s, and I promised mamma that I’d put down every cent I spent.”
But Uncle George seemed not to hear, and went on:
“Peanuts, fifteen cents; bananas, twenty-five cents; getting shoe mended, forty cents; soda water, ten cents; missionaries, five cents; getting bat mended, fifteen cents; lemonade for the boys, fifty cents; bananas, twenty-five cents; collection in church, two cents.”
“Please give me the book, uncle.”
“I’m glad you don’t forget your charitable duties, Phil,” said his uncle, giving up the book with rather a mischievous smile.
Phil took it in some confusion. He had heretofore thought but little more of his spendings than to remember his mother’s wish that he should keep an account of the money with which she had kept him so liberally supplied. Now, in looking over his hasty entries, he was astonished.
“Well, well!” he exclaimed, as he added up one page: “two dollars and ninety cents for eating and play, and seventeen cents for giving, and I bragging to the boys what a good thing it is to give regularly!”
He was a conscientious boy, and his heart smote him as he ran over the long list, and thought with his newly-awakened feelings, of the bread of life which that money might have carried to starving souls. If his mother had aimed to teach him a lesson through his account-book, she had not failed.