So the weeks passed, and the enterprise grew and flourished. I hope you remember Mrs. Speckle? Very early in the autumn she sent every one of her chicks out into the world to toil for themselves and began business. Each morning a good-sized, yellow-tinted, warm, beautiful egg lay in the nest waiting for Jerry; and when he came, Mrs. Speckle cackled the news to him in the most interested way.
“She couldn’t do better if she were a regularly constituted member of the firm with a share in the profits,” said Jerry.
The egg was daily carried to Mrs. Farley’s, where there was an invalid daughter, who had a fancy for that warm, plump egg which came to her each morning, done up daintily in pink cotton, and laid in a box just large enough for it. But there came a morning which was a proud one to Nettie. Jerry had returned from Mrs. Farley’s with news. “The sick daughter is going South; she has an auntie who is to spend the winter in Florida, so they have decided to send her. They start to-morrow morning. Mrs. Farley said they would take our eggs all the same, and she wished Miss Helen could have them; but somebody else would have to eat them for her.”
Then Nettie, beaming with pleasure, “Jerry, I wish you would tell Mrs. Farley that we can’t spare them any more at present; I would have told you before, but I didn’t want to take the egg from Miss Helen; I want to buy them now, every other morning, for mother and father; mother thinks there is nothing nicer than a fresh egg, and I know father will be pleased.”
What satisfaction was in Nettie’s voice, what joy in her heart! Oh! they were poor, very poor, “miserably poor” Lorena Barstow called them, but they had already reached the point where Nettie felt justified in planning for a fresh egg apiece for father and mother, and knew that it could be paid for. So Mrs. Speckle began from that day to keep the results of her industry in the home circle, and grew more important because of that.
Almost every day now brought surprises. One of the largest of them was connected with Susie Decker. That young woman from the very first had shown a commendable interest in everything pertaining to the business. She patiently did errands for it, in all sorts of weather, and was always ready to dust shelves, arrange cookies without eating so much as a bite, and even wipe teaspoons, a task which she used to think beneath her. “If you can’t trust me with things that would smash,” she used to say with scornful gravity, to Nettie, “then you can’t expect me to be willing to wipe those tough spoons.”
But in these days, spoons were taken uncomplainingly. Susie had a business head, and was already learning to count pennies and add them to the five and ten cent pieces; and when Jerry said approvingly: “One of these days, she will be our treasurer,” the faintest shadow of a blush would appear on Susie’s face, but she always went on counting gravely, with an air of one who had not heard a word.
On a certain stormy, windy day, one of November’s worst, it was discovered late in the afternoon that the molasses jug was empty, and the boys had been promised some molasses candy that very evening.
