‘Of course,’ agreed Aunt Grace, smiling, as she twisted one of Kitty’s long curls between her fingers. ‘Should you like to ask Mr. Faulkner for a collecting-box when he calls to-morrow, Emmeline?’ she added, in an unusually kind voice for a persecuting relation.
‘No; my extra money-box will do quite well,’ said Emmeline shortly.
The extra money-box had been given her by Micky on her last birthday. Having dropped a carefully treasured sixpence down that same mouse-hole which had been fatal to so many of his marbles, Micky had been at his wits’ end what to give Emmeline till the happy thought had struck him of presenting her with his own money-box, then standing empty and useless. Emmeline had thanked him for it graciously at the time, but Micky had always had an uneasy feeling that it was rather a mean makeshift of a present, so he was delighted to find it turning out at last to be really of some use.
‘I think that’s a splendid plan,’ he said; ‘you’ll be able to open it whenever you want to count how much money you’ve got, which you can’t do with the ordinary stupid sort of missionary-box.’
‘There’s a good deal in that,’ said Aunt Grace. ‘See, here’s a bright new shilling as a contribution to the extra money-box’s first meal. And now I think it’s time all you young people went to bed.’
For some time after she had got into bed that evening Emmeline lay awake dreaming day-dreams of that twelve-year-old girl who had been so wonderfully good to the poor. Strangely enough, however, the child of her visions was no longer a stranger, but Emmeline herself—Emmeline, who had mysteriously become ennobled, and who was known to everyone as ‘the saintly Lady Emmeline.’