generally very well able to keep her informed in regard to
what the people of the town said about her,--she thought that the
gossips would have been a good deal astonished if they had known how
much she had really given to the church, and that they would have been
absolutely amazed if they knew how much Mr. Perley had received for
general charities. And then she thought, with a tinge of sadness, how
very much surprised Mr. Perley would have been if he had known how much
more she was able to give away without feeling its loss.

Weeks passed on, the leaves turned red and yellow upon the trees, the
evenings and mornings grew colder and colder, and Mrs. Cliff did
everything she could towards the accomplishment of what now appeared to
her in the light of a great duty in her life,--the proper expenditure of
her income and appropriation of her great fortune.

Her labors were not becoming more cheerful. Day after day she said to
herself that she was not doing what she ought to do, and that it was
full time that she should begin to do something better, but what that
better thing was she could not make up her mind. Even the improvements
she contemplated were, after all, such mere trifles.

It was a very cold morning in October when Mrs. Cliff went into her
parlor and said to Willy that there was one thing she could do,--she
could have a rousing, comfortable fire without thinking whether wood was
five, ten, or twenty dollars per cord. When Willy found that Mrs. Cliff
wanted to make herself comfortable before a fine blazing fire, she
seemed in doubt.

"I don't know about the safety of it," she said. "That chimney's in a
pretty bad condition; the masons told us so years ago, and nothin' has
ever been done to it! There have been fires in it, but they have been
little ones; and if I was you, I wouldn't have too large a blaze in that
fireplace until the chimney has been made all right!"

Mrs. Cliff was annoyed. "Well then, Willy, I wish you would go for the
mason immediately, and tell him to come here and repair the chimney.
It's perfectly ridiculous that I can't have a fire in my own parlor when
I am able to have a chimney as high and as big as Bunker Hill Monument
if I wanted it!"

Willy Croup smiled. She did not believe that Mrs. Cliff really knew how
much such a chimney would cost, but she said, "You have got to remember,
you know, that we can't have the Cuthberts here to dinner to-morrow if
the masons come to work at that c