He is trying to save enough to go to the High School, but it's slow work.

I can do but little myself, and it all falls upon Harold.' 'But I like it, grandma.

I like to work for you and Jerry, and I have almost twenty dollars saved,' Harold said, 'and in a year or two I can go away to school, and work somewhere for my board.

Lots of boys do that.' Arthur was hitching his pony to the fence, while a new idea was dawning in his mind.
'Fifty cents a day,' he said to himself, 'and he has twenty dollars saved, and thinks himself rich.

Why, I've spent more than that on one bottle of wine, and here is this boy, Amy's son, wanting an education, and working to support his grandmother like a common laborer.