" she told
herself. "They can't be handsome ones. And, oh dear! they'll all think
me so horribly stingy and mean. Well, they'll have to, for I can't
explain! It's absolutely sickening, but it's inevitable."

So Gwen shut herself up in her bedroom, locked out the injured Lesbia,
who had plans of her own which she wished to pursue in privacy, put on
a thick jacket and a pair of mittens to keep herself warm, and set to
work bravely. It is rather hard to make bricks without straw, and her
supply of materials, mostly purloined from Beatrice's piece-box, was
decidedly scanty. She held a review of the articles when she had
finished, and screwed up her face over them in expressive
dissatisfaction.

"They're a shabby little lot, that's flat!" she decided.

She turned them over disconsolately--the needle-book for Beatrice, not
too tidily sewn; the blotter for Winnie, with its brown paper cover,
hastily painted with a spray of roses, and its one sheet of blotting
paper begged from Father's writing-table; the pincushion for Lesbia,
trimmed with a piece of washed ribbon; and the two postcard albums for
Basil and Giles, made out of pieces of cardboard with slits cut in the
corners.

"I can afford to spend the threepennybit on Father and Martin," she
thought; "but I must leave the halfpennies to rattle in my box, so
that it doesn't sound empty."

The village shop did not offer a very large selection of goods for an
expenditure of threepence. Gwen was almost at her wits' end what to
choose, and finally came away with a cake of oatmeal soap and a large
red chalk pencil. Walking back up the village she met Beatrice.

"I've just been to see the Casses," said the latter. "They're in awful
trouble. Thomas Cass has sprained his wrist and can't go out in his
boat, and Mrs. Cass is in bed with bronchitis. Johnnie's running about
with his toes all through his boots, and says he can't come to church
or Sunday School because he hasn't another pair."

"Haven't you an old pair of Lesbia's or Stumps's?" suggested Gwen.

"Not one. We sold them all at the Rummage Sale."

"Then he'll have to go barefoot, I suppose."

"I was wondering," said Beatrice tentatively, "if we could manage to
get him a pair ourselves. Winnie would give something, I'm sure, and
so would I, and so would Father."

Gwen was silent.

"I thought perhaps as you'd rescued him you might feel interested in
him, and you'd care--"

Beatrice did not finish the sentence, bu