"They will think I have spent it, and I haven't."
"They will not mind, dear, about spending it if you do not want to."
"But I do want to. You know that book I've been reading by myself all the last days? Well, I never thought of those sort of things before. It's a missionary-book; it tells about the little girls who are married so young in India, and are shut up in houses with no pleasures, no employments, no books, no work, no love, no anything! And, oh, Lucia, I thought—"
Lucia looked up in her face with swimming eyes.
"I thought," pursued Barbara, hiding her face on her sister's shoulder, "that I had so much; and that if I could do anything—I know this isn't much; but, Lucia, they want so much—money, and people to go, and lots of things. But I thought if I sent this now, when I am old enough I might go!"
"Oh, Barbara!"
"Don't you like me to? You would want to go if you had read how sad and desolate they are without ever having heard of a Saviour, and how perfectly different it all is when they know about Him!"
Lucia turned round and clasped the little missionary in her arms.
"Oh, Barbara, Barbara!" she said lovingly.
"You don't think father and mother will mind?"