thought that was hardly possible; but he didn’t like to contradict his mother, and besides they were now at the church-door, and had to go right in and take their seats. Mark thought the clergyman chose the strangest text that could be for Thanksgiving-day,—it was this,—
“‘There is nothing at all, beside this manna, before our eyes.’
“When church was over, and Mark and his mother were walking home again, they were overtaken by little Tom Crab.
“‘Come,’ said little Tom—‘let’s go sit on the fence and eat apples. We sha’n’t have dinner to-day till ever so late, ’cause it takes so long to get it ready; and I’m so hungry. What are you going to have for dinner?’
“‘I don’t know,’ said Mark.
“‘I know what we’re going to have,’ said Tom, ’only I can’t remember everything. It makes me worse than ever to think of it. Come—let’s go eat apples.’
“‘I haven’t got any,’ said Mark.
“‘Haven’t got any!’ said Tom, letting go of Mark’s elbow and staring at him—for the idea of a boy without apples had never before occurred to any of Mr. Crab’s family. ‘O you mean you’ve eaten up all you had in your pocket?’
“‘No,’ said Mark, ‘we haven’t had any this year. Last year Mr. Smith gave us a basketful.’
“‘Well come along and I’ll give you some,’ said Tom. ‘I’ve got six, and I guess three’ll do me till dinner. O Mark! you ought to see the goose roasting in our kitchen! I’ll tell you what—I guess I may as well give you the whole six, ’cause I can run home and get some more; and I might as well be home, too, for they might have dinner earlier than they meant to.’
“And filling Mark’s pockets out of his own, Tom ran off.
“It so happened,” said Beachamwell turning herself round with a tired air when she got to this point in her story—“it so happened, that Mark having stopped so long to talk with Tommy Crab, did not get home till his mother had her things off and the tablecloth on; and then being in a great hurry to help her, and a rather heedless little boy besides; there being moreover but one table in the room, Mark laid his six apples upon the sill of the window which was open. For it was a soft autumn day—the birds giving another concert in the still air, and the sunshine lying warm and bright upon everything. The apples looked quite brilliant as they lay in the window, and as Mark eat his queer little Thanksgiving dinner of bread and a bit of corned beef, he looked at them from time to time with great pleasure.
“But when it was almost time for the apples to come on table as dessert, Mark suddenly cried out,
“‘Mother! where are my six apples?’
“‘Why on the window-sill,’ said his mother.
“‘There aren’t but five! there aren’t but five!’ said Mark. ‘I must have lost one coming home!—no I didn’t either.’ And running to the window, Mark looked out. There lay the sixth apple on the ground, appropriated as the Thanksgiving dinner of his mother’s two chickens.
“Mark could hardly keep from crying.
“‘It’s too bad!’ he said—‘when I hadn’t but just six! The ugly things!’
“‘You called them beauties this morning,’ said his mother.
“‘But just see my apple!’ said Mark—‘all dirty and pecked to pieces.’
“‘And just see my little boy,’ said his mother—‘all red and angry. Did you suppose, my dear, that if apples rolled off the window-sill they would certainly fall inside?’
“‘I guess I’ll never put anything there any more,’ said Mark, gathering up the five apples in his arms and letting them all fall again. But they fell inside this time, and rolled over the floor.
“‘You had better decide how many apples you will eat just now,’ said Mrs. Penly, ‘and then put the others away in the closet.’
“‘It’s too bad!’ said Mark. ‘I hadn’t but six. And I thought you would have three and I’d have three.’
“‘Well you may have five,’ said his mother smiling—‘the chickens have got my part. And maybe some good will come of that yet, if it only teaches you to be careful.’
“Oddly enough,” said Beachamwell, “some good did come of it. When the chickens pecked the apple to pieces the seeds fell out, and one seed crept under a clover leaf where the chickens could not find it. And when the snow had lain all winter upon the earth, and the spring came, this little seed sprouted and grew, and sent down roots and sent up leaves, and became an apple-tree.”
“How soon?” said Carl.
“O in the course of years—by the time Mark was a big boy. And the tree blossomed and bore fruit; and from that time Mark and his mother never wanted for apples. He called it the ‘Thanksgiving Tree,’ but it was a true Beachamwell, for all that.”
“But say!” exclaimed Carl, catching hold of Beachamwell’s stem in his great interest, “Mark isn’t alive now, is he?”
“No,” said Beachamwell, twisting away from Carl and her stem together. “No, he is not alive now, but the tree is, and it belongs to Mark’s grandson. And the other day he picked a whole wagon-load of us and set off to market; and we three were so tired jolting about that we rolled out and lay by the wayside. That’s where your mother found us.”
“Well that is certainly a very pretty story,” said Carl, “but nevertheless I’m glad my stocking was full. But I will let you Beachamwell and Half-ripe and Knerly lie on the chest and hear the rest of the stories, for I like this one very much.”
Carl was tired sitting still by this time, so he went out and ran about on the beach till dinner; and after dinner he went up to his corner again. The sun came in through the little window, look-askance at Carl’s treasures, and giving a strange, old-fashioned air to purse and book and stocking. The shoes looked new yet, and shone in their blacking, and the apples had evidently but just quitted the tree; while the red cent gleamed away in the fair light, and the old pine cone was brown as ever, and reflected not one ray. Carl handled one thing and another, and then his eye fell on his small portion of money. He might want to spend it!—therefore if the cent could do anything, it must be done at once; and as he thought on the subject, the sun shone in brighter and brighter, and the red cent looked redder and redder. Then the sunbeam fled away, and only a dark little piece of copper lay on the chest by the side of the new shoes.
“Now red cent,” said Carl, “it is your turn. I’ll hear you before the purse, so make haste.”
“Turn me over then,” said the red cent, “for I can’t talk with my back to people.”
So Carl turned him over, and there he lay and stared at the ceiling.
THE STORY OF THE RED CENT
“I cannot begin to relate my history,” said the red cent, “without expressing my astonishment at the small consideration in which I am had. ‘I wouldn’t give a red cent for it—’ ‘It isn’t worth a red cent—’ such are the expressions which we continually hear; and yet truly a man might as well despise the particles of flour that make up his loaf of bread.
“People say it is pride in me—that may be and it may not. But if it be—why shouldn’t a red cent have at least that kind of pride which we call self-respect? I was made to be a red cent, I was wanted to be a red cent, I was never expected to be anything else—therefore why should I be mortified at being only a red cent? I am all that I was intended to be, and a silver dollar can be no more. Pride, indeed! why even Beachamwell here is proud, I dare say, and only because she is not a russeting; while I think– Well, never mind,—but I have bought a good many apples in my day and ought to know something about them. Only a red cent! People can’t bargain so well without me, I can tell you. Just go into the market to buy a cabbage, or into the street