Man of the Family Read Online Free PDF

Saturday. From then on—if you get any quantity of orders—it will be Wednesday and Saturday afternoons.”
    I had time to water the new cow and put her in the barn before Mother thought the plank was hot enough. Then we loaded all the cookery onto Hal’s wagon. Mother cut the pie, took one piece out so the ladies could taste the apples, and set it into her low Dutch oven with the iron cover. Then she packed the doughnuts into a hot stone crock with a napkin over them, sliced the brown bread with a string, and wrapped the picnic spoons in another napkin. As I started away from our kitchen door she called after me, “Now do be careful and polite, and don’t forget the prices.” She called again when I was going out the front gate, “Remember what I told you about the apple pies.”
    It didn’t look as if I was any good as a salesman. I started at the corner where our lane came into the highroad, and I went to every house. Most all the ladies came out and ate a doughnut, and sampled the other things. Some of them even went back into their kitchens and brought out a knife to cut themselves a little wedge of pie, but most of them said the same thing: “I’d just love to have some of your mother’s baked beans. My! that is delicious brown bread, and this Injun pudding is lovely—do you know how your mother makes it?—but they’re so dear. . . . I’m afraid we can’t afford any this week, but you call around again.”

    I knew the cow needed to be milked, but I didn’t go home till it was way after dark and all the doughnuts were gone. And I only had orders for eight quarts of beans and four quarts of Injun pudding, five loaves of brown bread, six dozen doughnuts, and two apple pies. I figured it all up and it only came to three dollars and thirty cents.
    I always had trouble with getting a lump in my throat when I wanted to cry and wouldn’t let myself. I had one as big as a baseball when I got home that night. I was mad about it, and I hated to go in and tell Mother how poor a job I’d done. But I started telling her as soon as I got to the door. She opened it just as I wheeled the wagon up, and asked me what had kept me so late and if I’d had any trouble.
    I was so mad I didn’t know what I was going to say till after I’d said it. “Yes, I had plenty,” I almost hollered, “and I don’t like to do business with women. They’re piggy and stingy and cheaters—most all of them. I only got three dollars and thirty cents’ worth of orders, and they ate up all the doughnuts and pudding and more than half of the beans and brown bread. And the ones that ate the most said it was too dear, and then told me to call around again so they could eat some more. And that fat old Mrs. . . .”
    That’s as far as I got. Mother had come down the steps. “There, there,” she said. “You’re all tired out and hungry. Didn’t you even stop to eat a doughnut yourself? I should have given you one when they were hot, but I just didn’t think. Why, it seems to me you did pretty well for your first day. We only have to sell twenty dollars’ worth a week. It’s half profit, and that will give us all we need.”
    I didn’t like being a sissy that Mother had to pat, but I did like her hand rubbing up and down on the back of my neck. “Now you come in,” she said, “and let me warm you up some beans before you milk our new cow.”
    Our new cow was a good one. She was real light fawn colored with curved-in horns, and her back wasn’t any higher than my head, but she was bigger around than Lady. Hal had named her Ducklegs because her legs were so short, and her bag was so big it came within a foot of the ground. I had to use two buckets to milk her. She gave about twelve quarts at a milking, but that big a bucket wouldn’t fit in under her. I had to