A Missionary Twig

Excerpt

EDITH TRIES TO EXPLAIN.

“I do think Edith is the queerest girl I ever saw in all my life!” said Marty Ashford.

“Don't jump up and down behind my chair that way, Marty,” said her mother; “you shake me so that I can scarcely hold my needle. What does Edith do that is so queer?”

“Oh, she's always putting ten into things.”

“Putting ten into things?”

“Yes'm. I mean when she gets any money she always says ten will go into it so many times, and then she takes a tenth of it—you know we learn about tenths in fractions at school—and goes and puts it in a blue box she has.”

“I should call that taking ten out of things.”

“Well, whatever it is, that's what she does. Every time she gets ten cents she puts one cent in her blue box.”

“What does she do if she only gets five cents?”

“Oh, she keeps it very carefully till she gets another five, and then she takes her tenth out of it. And would you believe it, when we were all at Asbury Park last summer—”

“Marty,” interrupted her mother, “can't you tell me just as well sitting still? You fidget so that you make me dreadfully nervous. Can't you sit still?”

“I don't believe I can, but I'll try real hard,” said Marty, crowding herself into Freddie's little rocking-chair and clasping her arms around her knees, as if to hold herself still.

“Well, what about Asbury Park?” Mrs. Ashford asked.

“Why, when we were at Asbury Park and Edith's father was going to New York, he gave her a whole dollar to do what she pleased with. Now you know it would be the easiest thing in the world to spend a dollar there. I could spend it just as easy as anything.”

“I dare say you could,” said Mrs. Ashford, laughing.

“And any way you know it was vacation, and even if you save tenths other times you oughtn't to feel as if you must do it in vacation. But Edith had to go and get her dollar changed and put ten cents of it in the old blue box.”

“So she would not take a vacation from her tenths?”

“No, indeed. And the other day when her uncle from Baltimore was here, he gave her fifty cents, and it would just pay for a perfectly lovely paintbox that she wants; but she couldn't buy it because five cents of the fifty was tenths; and now she'll have to wait till she gets some more money.”

“What does she do with all the money in the blue box?” Mrs. Ashford inquired.

“Oh, she gives it to some mission-band!” replied Marty in a tone of disgust.

“Is that the mission-band Miss Agnes Walsh wanted you to join?”

“Yes, ma'am; but I didn't want to take up my Saturdays going to a thing like that, I'd rather play.”

“Let me see,” said Mrs. Ashford, “what is the name of that band?”

“Missionary Twigs,” replied Marty. “Funny kind of a name, isn't it?”

Then presently she said, “I don't think Edith always takes the tenths out fair; for when her grandma was away lately for six days she paid Edith three cents a day for watering her plants, and of course that was eighteen cents. So the tenth was a good deal over one cent and not quite two, and yet Edith put two cents of it away.”

“I think that was more than fair.”

“Well, I suppose it was,” Marty admitted....