"You can get up half an hour earlier, every morning, and that will give you a good deal of extra time to think about your lessons." "I can _think_ about them in bed," said Harry.
"Humph!" said Kate; and she went on with her work.

She was knitting a "tidy," worth two pounds of sugar, or half a pound of tea, when it should be finished.
Harry did not get up any earlier; for, as he expressed it, "It was dreadfully cold before breakfast," on those January mornings; but his father and mother noticed that the subject of Aunt Matilda's maintenance did not so entirely engross the conversation of the brother and sister in the evenings; and they had their heads together almost as often over slate and schoolbooks as over the little account-book in which Kate put down receipts and expenditures.
On a Thursday night, about the middle of January, there was a fall of snow.

Not a very heavy fall; the snow might have been deeper, but it was deep enough for sledding.

On the Friday, Harry, in connection with another boy, Tom Selden, several years older than himself, concocted a grand scheme.

They would haul wood, on a sled, all day Saturday.
It was not to be any trifling little "boy-play" wood-hauling.