One evening a very funny thing happened--though, perhaps, in one sense
it was not a funny thing at all.

Several of the Montmorencys were evidently going to a children's party,
and just as Sara was about to pass the door they were crossing the
pavement to get into the carriage which was waiting for them. Veronica
Eustacia and Rosalind Gladys, in white-lace frocks and lovely sashes,
had just got in, and Guy Clarence, aged five, was following them. He
was such a pretty fellow and had such rosy cheeks and blue eyes, and
such a darling little round head covered with curls, that Sara forgot
her basket and shabby cloak altogether--in fact, forgot everything but
that she wanted to look at him for a moment. So she paused and looked.

It was Christmas time, and the Large Family had been hearing many
stories about children who were poor and had no mammas and papas to
fill their stockings and take them to the pantomime--children who were,
in fact, cold and thinly clad and hungry. In the stories, kind
people--sometimes little boys and girls with tender hearts--invariably
saw the poor children and gave them money or rich gifts, or took them
home to beautiful dinners. Guy Clarence had been affected to tears
that very afternoon by the reading of such a story, and he had burned
with a desire to find such a poor child and give her a certain sixpence
he possessed, and thus provide for her for life. An entire sixpence, he
was sure, would mean affluence for evermore. As he crossed the strip of
red carpet laid across the pavement from the door to the carriage, he
had this very sixpence in the pocket of his very short man-o-war
trousers; And just as Rosalind Gladys got into the vehicle and jumped
on the seat in order to feel the cushions spring under her, he saw Sara
standing on the wet pavement in her shabby frock and hat, with her old
basket on her arm, looking at him hungrily.

He thought that her eyes looked hungry because she had perhaps had
nothing to eat for a long time. He did not know that they looked so
because she was hungry for the warm, merry life his home held and his
rosy face spoke of, and that she had a hungry wish to snatch him in her
arms and kiss him. He only knew that she had big eyes and a thin face
and thin legs and a common basket and poor clothes. So he put his hand
in his pocket and found his sixpence and walked up to her benignly.

"Here, poor little girl," he said. "Here is a sixpence. I will give it
to