e the vicar at Four Winds, and she has been the organist ever since
she was sixteen--"

"Sixteen!" cried Penelope. "Can I be an organist when I am sixteen?"

"As I was saying," said Cousin Charlotte, in a slight tone of reproof,
"she has been the organist there since she was sixteen, and all for love,
so no one would be so ungrateful as to object to her using it."

"Oh, how beautiful, how beautiful, and just the very thing I wanted."
Penelope fairly danced with delight. "Isn't it strange," she said,
"how one gets just the very things one has been longing for?"

Esther did not make any remark. The old demon jealousy surged up in her
heart and forbade her saying anything that was nice or kind.

"Why was it that Penelope always attracted all the notice, and made
friends, and got the very things she longed for?" she asked herself
angrily. She wished she had said she would like to learn to play the
organ, and had made friends with Miss Row; then perhaps she would have had
lovely flowers given her, and be thought a lot of. Having finished her
task she picked up her things and walked away into the house.
Penelope looked after her, a little hurt at her seeming want of interest.
Angela and Poppy had dropped their play and were bubbling over with joyful
sympathy.

"Angela dear," said Miss Charlotte, "will you go to the henhouse for me,
and see if there are any eggs there?"

Angela was delighted. She was always longing to be employed, and she
loved anything to do with the fowls or the garden.

Miss Ashe's fowl-houses were models of what fowl-houses should be, airy,
snug, and beautifully clean; and her fowls were something to be proud of.
Angela ran off at once, found three eggs, and took them into the house.
Miss Ashe was busy in the pantry tying down jam.

"I wonder if you could mark them for me," she said. "My fingers are very
sticky."

Angela took the pencil and did her best. The figures were clumsy, but
they were her neatest. They were something like this--22/6.

She looked up at her cousin with shamed eyes and rosy cheeks as she held
out the eggs.

"That will do," said Miss Charlotte kindly. "You will soon be able to
make tiny figures." Then, as Esther had done once before, Angela put the
eggs in their box; but Esther had forgotten all about her first task in
her anxiety to get others.

"Cousin Charlotte, if I learn to write better, may I always collect the
eggs and mark them? I'd love to. I love t