"Butter, she said, wa' n't healthy for her, nor milk, nor meat, nor sugar, nor no such things, so it would all be easy enough for her. She only hesitated on my account. But I spoke up ever so brave. 'I don't mind,' says I; 'it'll be good fun, in fact, just to see how leetle we can live on!' And I think yet my mind was some expanded by that experience,—it driv me to such curus devices. At fust I took leetle bites off my cake, and leetle sips of my porridge; but I found a more effective plan afore long, for looks goes a good ways, and even when we deceive ourselves it kind o' helps us. Well, I took to hevin' my porridge in a shaller plate, so that there seemed twice as much on 't as there really was, and to hollerin' my cake out from the under side, so that, when it was reduced to a mere shell, it still represented what it wa' n't; a trick that I found to work very slick, especially when I imagined Rose a-lookin' at my shaller plate, and not knowin' how deep it was.
"'Won't we hev a beautiful surprise, though, for poor father!' my mother would say, when my spoon touched bottom, and it always touched bottom premature; and then we would talk of what we should buy, and I would be carried away like, and forget myself.
"A fur hat was talked on in our fust wild enthusiasm, but that idee was gin up arter we'd gone about among the stores; and we settled final on 't a pair o' square-toed brogans, with nails in the heels on 'em.
"'Let 'em be good sewed shoes, and not peg,' says my mother, when she give the shoemaker his order, 'and make 'em up just as soon as possible. You see my husband may be here any day now; and we mean to hev a great surprise for him,—Johnny and me.'
"The shoemaker, to my surprise,—for I expected him to enter into it with as much enthusiasm as we,—hesitated, said he was pressed heavy with work just then, and that he thought she had best go to some other shop! I didn't understand the meanin' on 't at all; but my mother did, and told him she could pay him aforehand, if he wanted it; at which he brightened up, and said, come to think on 't, he could make the brogans right away.
"Sure enough, they was finished at the appinted time, and I carried 'em home, with the money that come back in change inside o' one on 'em.
"'Why, Johnny,' says mother, when she counted it, her face all a-glowin', 'here's enough left to buy a handkerchief for your father!'
"Then she counted it agin, and said there was enough, she was a'most sure on 't. It mightn't get a silk one, not pure silk, but if she could only find somethin' with a leetle mixter o' cotton in 't, why it would look nearly as well,—the difference would never be knowed across the house.
"She wanted a new gingham apron for herself; but that wa' n't bought, and all the money, as I have guessed sence, went into the handkerchief. And a purty one it was, too,—yaller-colored, with a red border, and an anchor worked in one corner on 't with blue-silk yarn.
"So the fine presents was put away on the top shelf o' the cupboard, with the cap and the ring and the shawl, and there they stayed, week in and week out, and still the Dauphin didn't come in. I could see that my mother was a-growin' uneasy, more and more, though she never said nothin' to me that was discouragin'. She'd set sometimes for an hour a-lookin' straight into the air, and then she went up to the ruf more 'n common to look arter the things a-dryin' there.