ed to celebrate the day of rest; the
peace of God seemed resting upon the earth.

How beautiful the church appeared to Sally, who had never until this day
entered a house of prayer (dear old St. Clement's Danes, hallowed to us
by many memories), and when the organ pealed forth, and the voices sang
"I will arise," she thought, "This must be God's house, and those the
angels singing."

There was some one else in the church that Sabbath-day who also thought
it must be heaven of which little Pollie had-spoken, and that was poor
crippled Jimmy.

Mrs. Turner on coming downstairs to go to church had found the
neglected boy as usual lonely and desolate. His drunken mother had gone
in a pleasure-van with a party of friends like herself to Hampton Court,
leaving her child to amuse himself as he could; and kindly Mrs. Turner
had carried him up to her own room, washed and dressed him in one of
Pollie's clean frocks, given him some wholesome bread-and-butter, then
brought him with her to church.

He sat so still and quiet by the widow's side, his eyes intently fixed
upon the clergyman, listening eagerly to every word that was spoken,
every hymn that was sung, realising in his untutored mind a foretaste of
that heaven of which his earliest friend had told, where hunger was
unknown, and where sorrow and sighing should flee away.

Once only, when the rector gave forth his text, "Consider the lilies of
the field," the boy grasped the widow's hand, and whispered--

"Be they the flowers Pollie give me?"

Heaven and Pollie's violets filled his heart.

* * * * *

Many were the happy children who issued forth from St. Clement's on that
Sabbath noon; some hand-in-hand with loving parents, wending their way
to homes of plenty, where kindly faces would be waiting to greet them;
but of the many, none were or could be happier than those three little
ones who gathered round Mrs. Turner when service was over, and, walking
side by side, went home to squalid Drury Lane. No well-filled table
awaited _their_ coming, only the plain and scanty fare the poor widow
could offer to her child's young friends; but One hath said--

"Whosoever giveth a cup of water to one of these little ones in My name,
verily I say unto you, he shall in no wise lose his reward."

And this was Sally's first Sunday at church.

CHAPTER IX.

CRIPPLED JIMMY.

Many days and weeks had passed away, much as life does with us all.