Harry laughed.

"But perhaps she will have five-eighths of enough to eat if I only read
nine-sixteenths as much Latin," said he.

"Oh! you're always poking arithmetic fun at me," said Kate. "But I tell
you what you can do," she continued. "You can get up half an hour
earlier, every morning, and that will give you a good deal of extra time
to think about your lessons."

"I can _think_ about them in bed," said Harry.

"Humph!" said Kate; and she went on with her work. She was knitting a
"tidy," worth two pounds of sugar, or half a pound of tea, when it
should be finished.

Harry did not get up any earlier; for, as he expressed it, "It was
dreadfully cold before breakfast," on those January mornings; but his
father and mother noticed that the subject of Aunt Matilda's maintenance
did not so entirely engross the conversation of the brother and sister
in the evenings; and they had their heads together almost as often over
slate and schoolbooks as over the little account-book in which Kate put
down receipts and expenditures.

On a Thursday night, about the middle of January, there was a fall of
snow. Not a very heavy fall; the snow might have been deeper, but it was
deep enough for sledding. On the Friday, Harry, in connection with
another boy, Tom Selden, several years older than himself, concocted a
grand scheme. They would haul wood, on a sled, all day Saturday.