Our little fair was held the day after the candy pull, and the boys put
up a tent for us in Colonel Fay's grounds. Admission to the tent was
five cents. We sold candy, cake, ice-cream, and--home-made bread, and
our gains were nineteen dollars and ten cents. There were an apron
table, and a table where we sold pin-cushions and pen-wipers; but our
real profits came from the bread, which the girls' fathers were so proud
of that they bought it at a dollar a loaf. With the money which came
from the fair, we sent two little girls, Dot and Dimpsie, our poorest
children in Bloomdale, where most people were quite comfortably off, to
the seaside for three whole weeks.
I do not know what we would have done in Bloomdale if Dot and Dimpsie
had not had a father who would rather go off fishing, or lounge in the
sun telling stories, than support his family. Everybody disapproved of
Jack Roper, but everybody liked his patient little wife and his two dear
little girls, and we all helped them on.
There was no excuse for Jack. He was a tall, strong man, a good hunter,
fisher and climber, a sailor whenever he could get the chance to go off
on a cruise; but he would not work steadily. He did not drink, or swear,
or abuse his wife; but he did not support her, and if people called him
Shiftless Jack, he only laughed.
As he was the only person in Bloomdale who behaved in this way, we did
what mother calls condoning his offences--we called on him for odd jobs
of repairing and for errands and extra work, such as lighting fires and
carrying coals in winter, shoveling snow and breaking paths, weeding
gardens in summer, and gathering apples in the fall.
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