ink of having a collecting-box."

"Did you like the sermon, Pennie?" asked Miss Unity as they passed on;
"I hope you tried to listen."

"I did--at first," said Pennie, "till all those names came. I liked the
hymn," she added.

"Wouldn't it be nice for you to have a collecting-box at home,"
continued Miss Unity, "like the Merridews, so that you might help these
poor people?"

Pennie hung her head. She felt sure she ought to wish to help them, but
at the same time she did not want to at all. They lived so far-away, in
places with names she could not even pronounce, and they were such utter
strangers to her.

"Wouldn't you like it?" repeated her godmother anxiously.

Pennie took courage.

"You see," she said, "I haven't got much money--none of us have. And I
know Kettles--at least I've seen her. And I know where Anchor and Hope
Alley is, and that makes it so much nicer. And so I'd rather give it to
her than to those other people, if you don't mind."

"Of course not, my dear," said Miss Unity. "It is your own money, and
you must spend it as you like."

Pennie fancied there was a sound of disapproval in her voice, and in
fact Miss Unity was a little disappointed. She had always felt it to be
a duty to support missions and to subscribe to missionary societies, to
attend meetings, and to make clothes for the native children in India.
At that very time she was reading a large thick book about missions,
which she had bought at the auction of the Nearminster book club. She
read a portion every evening and kept a marker carefully in the place.
She was sure that she, as well as the dean, was deeply interested in
foreign missions. If she could have made them attractive to Pennie
also, it might take the place of Kettles and Anchor and Hope Alley.

For Miss Unity thought this a much more suitable object, and one
moreover which could be carried out without any contact with dirt and
wickedness! Squalor and the miseries of poverty had always been as
closely shut out of her life as they were from the trim prosperity of
the precincts, and Miss Unity considered it fitting that they should be
so. She knew that these squalid folk were there, close outside; she was
quite ready to give other people money to help them, or to subscribe to
any fund for their improvement or relief, but it had always seemed to
her unbecoming and needless for a lady to know anything about the
details of their lives.

The children's idea, the