of almsgiving would not have been performed to her soul's peace.

The problem which had been exercising her mind that Saturday night was
how to spend what was left of her benevolent fund in a treat for the
children of the neighboring work-house. The fund was low, and this had
decided the matter. The following Wednesday would be her twenty-first
birthday. If the children came to tea with her, the foundation of the
entertainment would, in the natural course of things, be laid in the
Vicarage kitchen. The charity bag would provide the extras of the feast.
Nuts, toys, and the like.

When the parson's daughter locked the drawer of the bandy-legged table,
she did so with the vigor of one who has made up her mind, and set about
the rest of her Saturday night's duties without further delay.

She put out her Sunday clothes, and her Bible and Prayer-book, and
class-book and pencil, on the oak chest at the foot of the bed. She
brushed and combed the silver-haired terrier, who looked abjectly
depressed whilst this was doing, and preposterously proud when it was
done. She washed her own hair, and studied her Sunday-school lesson for
the morrow whilst it was drying. She spread a colored quilt at the foot
of her white one for the terrier to sleep on--a slur which he always
deeply resented.

Then she went to bed, and slept as one ought to sleep on Saturday night,
who is bound to be at the Sunday School by 9.15 on the following
morning, with a clear mind on the Rudiments of the Faith, the history of
the Prophet Elisha, and the destinations of each of the parish
magazines.

SCENE II.

Fatherless--motherless--homeless!

A little work-house-boy, with a swarthy face and tidily-cropped black
hair, as short and thick as the fur of a mole, was grubbing, not quite
so cleverly as a mole, in the work-house garden.

He had been set to weed, but the weeding was very irregularly performed,
for his eyes and heart were in the clouds, as he could see them over the
big boundary wall. For there--now dark against the white, now white
against the gray--some Air Tumbler pigeons were turning somersaults on
their homeward way, at such short and regular intervals that they seemed
to be tying knots in their lines of flight.

It was too much! The small gardener shamelessly abandoned his duties,
and, curving his dirty paws on each side of his mouth, threw his whole
soul into shouting words of encouragement to the distant birds.

"That's a good