“There was once,” said Daddy, “a boy whose name was Worthington, and for short, they called him Worthy.
“He had a sister whom he called Mimmie, and it is a story of these two I want to tell you this evening.”
Jack and Evelyn looked very much pleased. They loved to hear about other children, especially boys and girls about their own ages.
“Worthington was unlike some brothers, but he was like you in this way, Jack; he liked to play with his sister. His sister liked, too, to play with him. He never frightened her, but he showed her how to do things, and she was never afraid when she was with him. In the fall, he took her for rides in her express-cart, and he made a high seat in the cart for her when he took her for slower and more stylish rides.
He taught her to climb trees and to swim and to do tricks on the trapeze. And she, too, used to play in the snowball fights, back in the forts which he and the other boys would make.
Well, it was summer, and Worthington was not going to school. He thought and he thought and he thought, and finally, he said:
“‘I wonder if it couldn’t be done. I will try anyway.’ He worked out the whole scheme in his head, and the next day he went to his aunt who owned a garden, and he said:
‘Auntie, I have been thinking about something.’
“‘This summer,’ he began, ‘I could hoe the beans in your garden, and I could weed the garden paths. I could water the flowers every night, and do all the weeding, in fact. You wouldn’t need to have a man do the work, except one day a week to do the heavy things. And then I thought I could give Mimmie a present of skates and boots out of my own money in the fall.’
And Auntie engaged him as an assistant gardener then and there.”
