Religion is the only thing I know of that you can get without money and without price, and even that you can’t keep without both.  Not being suitable to the season, I couldn’t give that away, even if I had it to spare, and wondering what to do almost made me sick.

I thought and thought until my brain curdled.  I looked over everything I had to see if there was a thing I could sell.  There wasn’t.  I couldn’t tell Miss Katherine, knowing she’d fix up some way to give me some and pretend I was earning it; and then, one day, when she was out, I locked myself in her room, and Martha gave Mary such a spanking talk that Mary moved.

Everything Martha had suggested before, Mary had some excuse for not doing.  Mary is lazy at times, and, as for pride, she’s full of it.  Martha generally gives the trouble, but Mary needs plain truth every now and then, and that day she got it.  When the talk was over, there was a plan settled on, and the plan was this.

Each day in December we have an apple for dinner.  Mr. Riley sends us several barrels every winter, and, as they won’t keep, we have one apiece until they’re gone.

We don’t have to eat them at the table, and when Martha told Mary you could do anything you wanted if you wanted to hard enough—­except raise the dead, of course—­the idea came that I could sell my apple.  And right away came the thought of the boy I could sell it to.  John Maxwell is his name.

He goes to our Sunday-school and is fifteen, and croaks like a bull-frog.  Ugly?  Pug-dog ugly; but he’s awful nice, and for a boy has real much sense.

His father owns the shoe-factory, and has plenty of money.  I know, for he told me he had five cents every day to get something for lunch, and fifty cents a week to do anything he wants with.  His mother gives it to him.

Well, the next Sunday he came over to talk, like he always does after Sunday-school is out, and I said, real quick, Mary giving signs of silliness: 

“I’m in business.  Did you know it?”

“No,” he said.  “What kind?  Want a partner?”

“I don’t.  I want customers.  I’m in the Apple business.  I have an apple every day.  It’s for sale.  Want to buy it?”

“What’s the price?” Then he laughed.  “I’m from New Jersey.  What’s it worth?”

“It’s worth a cent.  As you’re from New Jersey, I charge you two.  Take it?”

“I do.”  And he started to hand the money out.

But I told him I didn’t want pay in advance.  And then we talked over how the apple could be put where he could get it, and the money where I could.  We decided on a certain hole in the Asylum fence John knew about, and every evening that week I put my apple there and found his two pennies.  On Saturday night I had fourteen cents.  Wasn’t that grand?  Fourteen cents!

But the next Sunday there came near being trouble.  Roper Gordon—­he’s John Maxwell’s cousin—­had heard about the apple selling.  He told me I wasn’t charging enough, and that he’d pay three cents for it.