“I'll wait till bedtime,” she thought.
By bedtime she had decided not to put it in at all.
“I b'lieve I'll borrow it. It wont do any harm to let the box go empty for one week. I'll get the chair to-morrow, and make the tenth all right next Sunday.”
So she got into bed and covered herself up, but she could not go to sleep. She tossed and tumbled for what seemed to her a long time. “It's all because that penny isn't in the box,” she thought. Finally she could stand it no longer. She got up, and feeling around in the drawer, found the penny and put it in the box. Then she went to bed, and was soon asleep.
Having decided she could not have what she so ardently desired, Marty should have kept out of the way of temptation, but every day she went to look at the chairs, and seeing them, she continued to want one. By Thursday they were all gone but two, and Hattie triumphantly announced that at last her mamma had given her money to buy one. Then Marty felt that she must have the other.
When she had her wraps on that afternoon ready to go out to play, she went to the missionary box, and, with hands trembling in her excitement, took out the solitary penny. Then without stopping to think she ran down stairs. Just as she was opening the street-door she repented, and after meditating a while in the vestibule, standing first on one foot and then on the other, she slowly retraced her steps and put the penny back.
“Now it's safe,” she said. “I'll just dash out without it, and of course when I haven't got it, I can't spend it.”
She dashed about half way, when all at once the vision of the lovely chair rose up before her, and the desire to possess it was greater than ever. She stopped again to think, and the result was, she returned and got the penny—it was not quite so hard to take it out the second time as it was the first—and started for the street once more.
Perhaps she might have repented and gone back again, had not her mother, who was entertaining some ladies in the parlor, called to her, “Marty, don't race up and down stairs so,” and then Marty went out with the penny in her hand.