Mrs. Berryman assented. "You want it badly enough," she admitted; "I didn't notice the frock you are wearing was so shabby till I saw you in the sunshine yesterday. It costs something to clothe a growing girl like you," she added grudgingly.
Melina flushed, and thought of the money hidden in the chimney. She proceeded to try on her new frock in silence; it fitted her very nicely, and a smile lit up her thin little face as she looked down over herself and noted the fact.
"Agnes will hardly know me to-morrow," she said with a pleased laugh; "she's never seen me anything but shabby yet. I never had a really new frock before." Hitherto, poor child, she had always been clad in second-hand clothes.
"Oh, Gran," she went on, "I wish—oh, I do wish I could have a new hat too! It wouldn't cost much—just a cheap one, I mean. I saw a sailor hat, with a dark-blue ribbon, ticketed 'sevenpence three-farthings' in a shop in the town the other day; it would look so nice with this frock."
"Sevenpence three-farthings? That means eightpence. Let me see your old hat."
Melina fetched it, and watched anxiously whilst her grandmother examined it. Perhaps Mrs. Berryman had not realised that it was so disgracefully shabby as it was, for she quickly laid it aside and, taking out her purse, presented Melina with a shilling.
"There, child, you can buy the hat you fancy," she said, "and you can keep the change."
For a minute Melina almost doubted that she had heard aright; then she gave a little gasp and cried quite excitedly:
"Oh, thank you, thank you, Gran! Why, I shall have fourpence after buying the hat! Do you know what I shall do? I shall begin to save towards buying a Bible."
"Towards buying a Bible?" echoed Mrs. Berryman in great astonishment.