“We don’t know what to do,” answered Tom.  “A friend of Father’s promised to send him a load of coal to-day.  It may come any minute and Father is too busy to put it into the coal-house.  Mother can’t attend to it because she must finish some sewing for a lady, so there is no one but Sarah and me.  We are afraid we can’t put it all away before night, and if it isn’t locked up in the coal-house this evening, something may happen to it while we are asleep, and then we shouldn’t have any coal to keep us warm in the winter.”

“Why don’t you hire a man to put it away for you?” asked Johnnie Jones.

“We haven’t money enough,” Tom answered.

“I’d better go home and ask my mother what to do.  She’ll know,” said Johnnie Jones.

“Well,” Mother said, when she had heard of the children’s difficulty, “Sarah and Tom need friends to help them, so why don’t you, in your overalls, and Ned, Susie, and the other children in theirs, take your wagons and wheelbarrows, and spend the afternoon helping with the coal?  A dozen pairs of hands, even if they are small, can accomplish a great deal of work.”

Mother sent her hired man to see that the coal-house was ready for the coal, while Johnnie Jones hurried off to collect the children.

The boys and girls dressed in their overalls hastened to the small brown house.  There they found Sarah and Tom as busy as bees, and very happy to welcome the children gathered to help them.  Such a merry time as they had!  Some of the children played that they were strong horses, and drew the wagons, which the others loaded at the gate and unloaded at the coal-house door.  Very soon the play drivers looked like real drivers of coal-carts for they were covered with coal-soot from their heads to their feet.  All of the children, too, worked quite as hard as any real horses, or any real men, and after a while, before dark, the load of coal was safe in the coal-house.  Then the children ran home for a much-needed bath.

Meantime Mrs. Watson had been sewing all the day long, and in the evening, when it was time to go home, she felt very tired.  All day she had worried about the coal, wondering how she could attend to it that night.  She knew that her children would try to help, but she did not expect very much from them because their hands were so small.  As she walked home she thought, and thought, trying to decide what was best to do.

At last she came near the ugly little house, and then she was greatly surprised, for Sarah and Tom, neat and clean, were swinging on the gate, the pavement was nicely swept, and there was no sign of any coal.

[Illustration:  Such a merry time as the children had!]

“Didn’t the coal come?” she asked the children.

“Yes,” they answered joyfully, “and it is in the coal-house.”

She could scarcely believe them, but they said:  “Come and see.”

When she saw that the coal was really there, locked away for the winter in the shed, she was almost too surprised and pleased to speak.