But Dicky was a good little fellow and helped his mamma ever so much,
pulling out bastings from her needlework, bringing in the kindling and
shavings from the shed, and going to the store for her butter and
potatoes and eggs. So one morning she said:--

"Dicky, you have been such a help to me this summer, I'd like to give
you something to make you very happy. Let us count the money in your
bank--you earned it all yourself--and see what we could buy with it.
To be sure, Bess wants a waterproof and Dot needs rubbers, but we do
want our little boy to have a birthday present."

"Oh, mamma," cried he, clapping his hands, "what a happy day it will
be! I shall buy that tool-box at the store round the corner! It's such
a beauty, with a little saw, a claw-hammer, a chisel, a screw-driver,
and everything a carpenter needs. It costs just a dollar, exactly!"

Then they unscrewed the bank and found ninety-five cents, so that it
would take only five cents more to make the dollar. Dicky earned that
before he went to bed, by piling up wood for a neighbor; and his mamma
changed all the little five and ten cent pieces into two bright half-
dollars that chinked together joyfully in his trousers pocket.

The next morning he was up almost at the same time the robins and
chimney-swallows flew out of their nests; jumped down the stairs, two
at a time, and could scarcely eat his breakfast, such a hurry as he
was in to buy the precious tool-box. He opened the front door, danced
down the wooden steps, and there on the curb in front of the house
stood a little girl, with a torn gingham apron, no shoes, no hat, and
her nut-brown curls flying in the wind; worse than all, she was crying