“If we are really going to earn money to help mammy with, we must expect to do some disagreeable work,” said Jack gravely.
Rosalie hid her ashamed little face a moment, then said, “Very well, I’ll do it. But how do you know she wants me?”
“I heard her tell the cook when I carried the lettuce there this morning that she’d give fifty cents to any girl who would take care of the baby a week—just come in every day. Her cousin is going there to-morrow to visit, and she wants her time to herself. Just think, Rosalie, fifty bright new cents!”
The Company fairly clapped her hands. “Perhaps she’ll let me bring the baby over home, then I sha’n’t be away from Primrose.”
“She’d be only too glad to get him out of the way, I’ll be bound,” said Jack; “I sh’d be, if I owned that baby.”
“And Primrose is so sweet that any other baby would smile and be good, even if it was a great fat, big, crying, red-faced one like Mrs. Prouty’s,” said Rosalie, seeing some alleviation to her task of earning fifty cents. “Now what is Corny going to do?” she demanded, trying not to hope that his work was disagreeable also.
“Corny and I have to work together,” said Jack, with a little grimace he couldn’t help. “It’s to clean up Widow Brown’s pig-pen.”
“I sha’n’t clean up that old woman’s pig-pen, nor anybody’s pig-pen,” shouted Corny, with a vicious hack at the log; “no, sir!”
“Very well, sir,” cried Jack back again, “then I’ll do it alone.”
He didn’t say, “I would if I were you,” or anything of the persuasive sort, knowing that by no such ways could he manage Cornelius. He simply let him alone, as he always did, and did his own duty. The consequence was, the chubby young wood-chopper presently turned around, and said complacently, “When I get this log chipped up for mammy, I’ll join you.”