vicar, she felt relieved, and wished
she had said a few words of thanks, making up her mind to atone for the
omission at the first opportunity, and then setting so busily to work
that her troubles were temporarily forgotten.

While she was very busy, a lad arrived with a note from Miss Burge,
asking her to come up to the house to tea and talk over a proposal Mr
William Forth Burge had made about the schools, and ending with a
promise to drive her back in the pony-chaise. Hazel hesitated for a few
moments, but she did not like to slight Miss Burge's invitation, so she
wrote back saying that she would come.

Then the girls had to be dismissed, and the pence counted up and placed
in a canvas-bag along with the money received for the month's coal and
blanket club, neither of the amounts being heavy as a sum total, but,
being all in copper, of a goodly weight avoirdupois.

Just as the bag was tied up and the amounts noted down, there was a
light tap at the door, and Mr Chute stepped in, glancing quickly up at
the slit made by the half-closed partition shutters to see if it was
observable from this side.

"I just came in to say, Miss Thorne--well, that is odd now, really."

Hazel looked her wonder, and he went on:

"It's really quite funny. I said to myself, `the pence will mount up so
that they will be quite a nuisance to Miss Thorne, and I'll go and offer
to get them off her hands.'"

"Thank you, Mr Chute, I won't trouble you," replied Hazel.

"Trouble? Oh, it's no trouble," he said, laughing in a peculiar way.
"I get rid of mine at the shops, and I can just as easily put yours with
them, and of course it's much easier to keep shillings than pence; and
then when you've got enough you can change your silver for gold."

"By-the-way," said Hazel, "when do we have to give up the school pence
and club money?"

"Only once a year," said Mr Chute, who was in high glee at this
approach to intimacy. "You'll have to keep it till Christmas."

"Keep it--till Christmas! What! all that money!"

"To be sure! Oh, it isn't much. May I--send your--coppers with mine?"

Hazel paused for a moment, and then accepted the offer, the schoolmaster
noting in his pocket-book the exact amount, and waiting while Hazel went
into the cottage to fetch the other sums she had received, the whole of
which Mr Chute bore off in triumph, smiling ecstatically, and
exclaiming to himself as soon as he was alone:

"She's mine!--she's mine!--she