My eight-year-old skipped lunch for six weeks to buy a red dress for the little girl across the street. The next morning our lawn was covered with fifty lunchboxes — and taped to the biggest one, a beat-up metal thing sitting alone in the middle of the grass, was a note that said OPEN THIS ONE FIRST.

She has not been back to our table.

She sent Milo a card at Christmas with fifty dollars in it and no note. He put the fifty in the fund and kept the card in the shoebox with the other ones, which I think tells you exactly where he's landed on it, and he got there without any help from me.

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PART 5 — WHAT WENDELL WATCHED

The eighteen thousand four hundred dollars went into an account for Birdie.

That took some doing. Rhonda refused it three times and I don't blame her; there is a kind of pride that keeps a person upright and I was not going to pry it off her. What finally worked was Wendell, who told her on his own front porch that it was not charity and not a gift to her, and that if she wanted to be useful she could let an old man decide where his own money went for the first time in his life.