most
staid and stately homes, received the surprise of its life--a surprise
that sent hitherto complacently contented women scurrying into attics
and closets, and stirred reputedly miserly men into thrusting hands into
inside pockets for spare bills.

Perhaps it was the sight of the eager young faces, alight with generous
enthusiasm. Perhaps it was the pathos of the story of one missionary
barrel as told by girlish lips trembling with feeling. Perhaps it was
just the novelty of receiving so direct, and so confident an appeal for
"something you'd like to have given to you, you know." Perhaps it was a
little of all three that worked the miracle. At all events, in the
church parlor some time later, a little band of excited, marveling women
worked until far into the evening packing a missionary barrel for the
Rev. Luke Jones. And when it left their hands, there was in it the
pretty dress for the minister's wife, the unworn underclothing for the
minister's boys, the fresh hair-ribbons for the minister's daughter, and
the serviceable coat for the minister himself, to say nothing of
uncounted books, games, and household articles of a worth and
desirability likely to make a missionary minister's family exclaim with
surprise and delight--until they found the generous roll of bills in the
minister's coat pocket, when they would be dumb with a great wave of
reverent gratitude to a God who could make human hearts so kind.

"There!" sighed Genevieve, when she and Cordelia had left their last
parcels at the church door. "I reckon we've got something different for
that barrel now--but we'll never let Quentina know, _never_--that we had
a thing to do with packing it."

"No; but I guess she'll suspect it, though," returned Cordelia, with a
teary smile. "But, oh, Genevieve, didn't they give just splendidly!"

"I knew they would," declared Genevieve, "if they just understood."

"Well, then, I wish they'd--understand oftener," sighed Cordelia, as she
turned down her street.

Two days later the Happy Hexagons were holding a hurried meeting at the
parsonage after school. It was the night before the last day of the
term, and they were all trying to work at once on the sofa pillow they
had planned to give Miss Hart. Cordelia was making the tassel for one
corner, and Alma Lane one for another. The other two tassels were being
sewed on by Elsie and Bertha. Tilly was writing the card to go with it,
and Genevieve was holding the paper and r