what was the trouble.

"We don't know what to do," answered Tom. "A friend of Father's promised
to send him a load of coal to-day. It may come any minute and Father
is too busy to put it into the coal-house. Mother can't attend to it
because she must finish some sewing for a lady, so there is no one but
Sarah and me. We are afraid we can't put it all away before night, and
if it isn't locked up in the coal-house this evening, something may
happen to it while we are asleep, and then we shouldn't have any coal
to keep us warm in the winter."

"Why don't you hire a man to put it away for you?" asked Johnnie Jones.

"We haven't money enough," Tom answered.

"I'd better go home and ask my mother what to do. She'll know," said
Johnnie Jones.

"Well," Mother said, when she had heard of the children's difficulty,
"Sarah and Tom need friends to help them, so why don't you, in your
overalls, and Ned, Susie, and the other children in theirs, take your
wagons and wheelbarrows, and spend the afternoon helping with the coal?
A dozen pairs of hands, even if they are small, can accomplish a great
deal of work."

Mother sent her hired man to see that the coal-house was ready for the
coal, while Johnnie Jones hurried off to collect the children.

The boys and girls dressed in their overalls hastened to the small brown
house. There they found Sarah and Tom as busy as bees, and very happy to