hey can tell
their troubles in a friendly way. The poor-spirited ones whine, with an
eye on my pocket, and where I used to get welcoming smiles I now only
get expectant grins. And the high-spirited ones are so afraid that I'll
offer them help that their time is spent in snubbing me and keeping me
in my place."

"It's no use getting down about it," Pamela told her. "You are only
finding what thousands have found before you, that's it the most
difficult thing in the world to be wisely charitable. You will never
remove mountains. If you can smooth a step here and there for people and
make your small corner of the world as pleasant as possible you do very
well."

Jean agreed with a sigh. "If I don't finish by doing harm. I have awful
thoughts sometimes about the dire effects money may have on the boys--on
Mhor especially. In any case it will change their lives entirely. It's a
solemnising thought," and she laughed ruefully.

Jean plodded on her well-doing way, and knocked her head against many
posts, and blundered into pitfalls, and perhaps did more good and earned
more real gratitude than she had any idea of.

"It doesn't matter if I'm cheated ninety-nine times if I'm some real
help the hundredth time," she told herself. "Puir thing," said the
recipients of her bounty, in kindly tolerance, "she means weel, and it's
a kindness to help her awa' wi' some o' her siller. A' she gies us is
juist like tippence frae you or me."

One woman, at any rate, blessed Jean in her heart, though her stiff,
ungracious lips could not utter a word of thanks. Mary Abbot lived in a
neat cottage surrounded by a neat garden. She was a dressmaker in a
small way, and had supported her mother till her death. She had been
very happy with her work and her bright, tidy house and her garden and
her friends, but for more than a year a black fear had brooded over her.
Her sight, which was her living, was going. She saw nothing before her
but the workhouse. Death she would have welcomed, but this was shame.
For months she had fought it out, as her eyes grew dimmer, letting no
one know of the anxiety that gnawed at her heart. No one suspected
anything wrong. She was always neatly dressed at church, she always had
her small contribution ready for collectors, her house shone with
rubbing, and as she did not seem to want to take in sewing now, people
thought that she must have made a competency and did not need to work so
hard.

Jean knew Miss Abbot wel