At the close of the year mother knows where every penny of hers has gone.  Even to the value of a postage-stamp or a postal-card.

As the Clover Leaf Club girls were not all so fortunate as I in having an allowance, they took less interest in learning how to shop.

There are two ways of shopping.  One is to set out without a very definite idea of what you wish to buy, and to buy what you do not want, if the shopman persuades you to do so, or it pleases your fancy.

The other is to make a list of articles before you leave home, something like this:  Nine yards of merino for gown; three yards of silesia; two spools of cotton, Nos. 30 and 50; one spool of twist; one dozen crochet buttons; a dozen fine napkins and a lunch cloth; five yards of blue ribbon one inch wide; a paper of pins; a bottle of perfumery; five-eighths of a yard of ruching for the neck.

Provided with such a memorandum, the person who has her shopping to do will save time by dividing her articles into classes.  The linen goods will probably be near together in the shop, and she will buy them first; then going to the counters where dress goods are kept, she will choose her gown and whatever belongs to it; the thread, pins, twist and other little articles will come next; and last, her ruching and ribbon.

She will have accomplished without any trouble, fuss, or loss of temper what would have wearied an unsystematic girl who has never learned how to shop.

Then, before she set out, she would have known very nearly how much she could afford to spend—­that is, she would have known if my mother’s way had been her mother’s—­and on no account would she have spent more than she had allowed herself in thinking it over at home.

When the club undertook charge of all Dot’s and Dimpsie’s expenses, it was rather a puzzle to some of us to know how we were to pay our share.  I set apart something from my allowance.  Lois watched for her papa’s pleasant moods.  Veva danced up to her father, put her arms around his neck, and lifted her mouth for a kiss, coaxed him for some money to give away, which she always received directly.  Others of the girls were at a loss what to do.

Jeanie and Linda had a happy thought, which they carried out.  They said:  “We have learned how to make bread and biscuits and cake and candy, and we all know how often our friends cannot persuade cooks to stay in their houses.  We will make bread or cake on Saturday mornings for anybody who is good enough to pay for it.”

They could not see why it was not just as sensible a thing to make and sell good bread as to paint scarfs or embroider tidies, and mother, after she heard of their proposal, quite agreed with them.

Through our efforts, combined as they were, we sent our little girls to Kindergarten, kept warm shoes and stockings on their feet, and brought them up respectably, though Jack Roper was as odd and indolent as ever, and never showed by so much as a look that he imagined anybody took an interest in his children.