ns a pure _sparrowism_,
and an excellent creed it is for those of sufficient faith and courage.

Of how the Sunday School teaching is translated by the children into
terms of every day life, we had a fine example two or three weeks ago.
Jimmy came home full of an idea that 'if you don' ast God to stop it,
Satant 'll have 'ee,' and Mrs Widger asked him: "What's the difference
then between God an' Satant?"

"Ther ain't nort."

"Yes, there is. What does God du?"

"God don't do nort unless yu asks Him."

"An' what does Satant du?"

"Oh--I know!--Satant gets into yer 'art, an' gives 'ee belly-ache an'
toothache."

Not many days afterwards, Tommy was being sent to bed for getting his
feet wet. "Yu daring rascal! I'll knock yer head off if yu du it again.
Yu'll die, yu will! An' what'll yu du then?"

"Go to heaven, o' course."

"An' what do you think they'll say to 'ee there? Eh?"

Tommy was puzzled.

"You can ask 'em to send us better weather." I suggested.

"Tell 'ee what I'll do," said Tommy with a prodigiously wise squint.
"I'll take up a buckle-strap to thiccy ol' God, if 'er don't send
better weather, an' then yu won't none on 'ee get sent to bed for wet
feet!"

19

At a corner near here, there is a very blank cottage wall, and in
the centre of it a little window. Behind the closed window, all
day and every day, sits an old woman at her lace pillow. Some
portraits--Rembrandt's especially--give one the impression that a
shutter has suddenly been drawn aside; that behind the shutter we are
allowed to watch for a moment or two a face so full of meaning as to
be almost more than human. The same impression is given me by the old
lace-maker in the window when I pass to and fro, and catch sight of
her face so still, her hands so active, her bobbins so swift and,
because of the intervening glass, so silent. How nervously the hands
speed with the bobbins, how very deliberately with the pins that make
the pattern! How hardly human it is!

One evening, however, the window was open, children stood round in a
group, and I heard the small click of the bobbins through the still
air. The children were laughing, delighted with the old woman's
swiftness. She that had been a picture, was become a living being.

No doubt, she is working at her lace pillow now. She has several mouths
to feed. I wonder does she earn as much as Grannie Pinn?

20

[Sidenote: _CONGERING_]

This long time I have wished to go congeri