Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 12, No. 33, December, 1873

"It is sugar—sugar in my coffee. I'll drink my coffee without sugar till that sixty dollars is made up. I'll never touch sugar again till that money is made good—never!" and into the kitchen sailed Mrs. Lively with her pan of dishes.

"Sugar, please," demanded Napoleon the next morning at the breakfast-table. Dr. Lively passed over the sugar-bowl.

"How can you have the heart to take so much?" said the mother, watching Napoleon as he emptied one heaping spoonful and then another into his coffee-cup. "But I might have known you'd leave your mother to bear the burden all alone. All the economizing, all the self-denial, must come on my shoulders. And just look at me!—nothing but skin and bones. I've got to make up everybody's losses, everybody's wasting. It's a rare thing if I get a warm meal with the rest of you: I'm all the while eating up the cold victuals and scraps and burnt things that nobody else will eat."

"I'd eat 'em," said Napoleon.

"Of course you'd eat them. There's nothing you wouldn't eat, in the heavens above or the earth beneath. And all the thanks I get is to be taunted with stinginess."

"Take some?" asked Napoleon, passing the sugar-bowl to his mother.

"Never!" she exclaimed, drawing back as though a viper had been extended to her. "Take the thing away—set it down there by your father's plate. I said I'd use no more sugar till that money was made good. When I say a thing I mean it."

"Now, Priscilla," remonstrated the doctor, "what is the use of breaking in on your lifelong habits? You'll make yourself sick, that's all."

"Dr. Lively, you're trying to tempt me: why can't you uphold me? It will be hard enough at best to make the sacrifice. Yes, I shall make myself sick, but it won't hurt anybody but me. I can get well again, as I've always had to."

"Perhaps so, after a druggist's bill and hired girl's wages. Every spoonful of sugar you save may cost you ten dollars."

"Then, why don't you give up that vile tobacco? I won't use any sugar till you do. All you care about is the money my sickness will cost—my suffering is nothing." Mrs. Lively raised her cup to her lip, then set it back in the saucer with a haste that sent the contents splashing over the sides.

"Bitter?" asked Napoleon.

"Bitter! of course it's bitter—bitter as tansy. It sends the chills creeping up and down my backbone, and the top of my head feels as if it was crawling off. I believe I shall lose my scalp if I don't use sugar."

"To stick it on?" asked Napoleon with a stolid face.

"Oh, it's beautiful in my only child to laugh at a mother's discomfort!" "Ain't a-laughin'," he replied.

"What are you doing if you ain't laughing?"

"Eatin'."

"Of course: you're always eating." Again Mrs. Lively essayed her coffee, but fell back in her chair with an unutterable look. "Oh, I can't!—I cannot do it!" she exclaimed.

"Don't," Napoleon advised.

Mrs. Lively with a sudden jerk sat bolt upright, as straight as a crock. "Who asked you for your advice?" she demanded sharply.

The young Lively swallowed three times distinctly, and then replied, while shaking the pepper-box over his potato, "Nobody."

"Then, why can't you keep it to yourself?"

"Can."

"Then, why don't you do it?"

"Do."

"You exasperating boy! Wouldn't you die if you didn't get the last word?"

"Dunno."

"Look here, Napoleon Lively: you've got to stop your everlasting talking. Your chatter, chatter, chatter just tries me to death. I'm not—"

Here Dr. Lively, overcome with the absurdity of this charge, did a very unusual thing. He broke into laughter so prolonged and overwhelming that Mrs. Lively, after some signal failures to edge in a word of explanation, left the table in the midst of the uproar and dashed up stairs, where she jerked and pounded the beds with a will.

The next day Mrs. Lively was canning some cherries which the doctor had taken in pay for a prescription. The air was filled with the mingled odor of the boiling fruit and of burning sealing-wax. The cans were acting with outrageous perversity, for they were second-hand and the covers ill-fitting. Her blood was almost up to fainting heat, and she was worried all over. She had to do all her preserving in a pint cup, as she expressed it in her contempt for the diminutive proportions of the saucepan which she was using.

"Here 'tis," said Napoleon, suddenly appearing at the kitchen-door.

"Here what is?" demanded Mrs. Lively shortly, without looking up. Her two hands were engaged—one in pressing the cover on a can, the other in pouring wax where a bubble persistently appeared.

"This," answered Napoleon.

"What?"

"Purse."

"Purse!" she screamed. "Is the money in it?" She dropped her work and took eager possession of it. "Where did you find it?"

"Big apple tree," replied Napoleon.

"Under the apple tree?"

"Fork," was the lad's emendation.

"Why in the name of sense do you have to bite off all your sentences? They are like a chicken with its head off. Do you mean to say that you found the purse in the fork of the big apple tree?"

"Do; and pipe."

"Pipe! of course. One might track your father through a howling wilderness by the pipes he'd leave at every half mile. Don't let him know you've found the purse, and to-morrow morning I'm going to see if I can't have some of his bills paid before the money is lost, as it would be if he should get it in his hands."

The next morning Mrs. Lively felt under her pillow, as on a former occasion, and, as on that former occasion, found the purse where she had put it the night before. She gave it into Napoleon's hands after breakfast, and despatched him to settle the bills. In less than half an hour he was back.

"Did you pay all the bills?" she asked.

"No."

"How many?"

"None."

"Why don't you go along and pay those bills, as I bade you?"

"Have been."

"Then, why didn't you settle the bills?"