I don't know quite how it happened, for all the other children were under the sofa, trying to catch Sammy the cat, and Miss Toosey distracted by her anxiety lest they or the cat should get hurt, and Mabel was placidly tapping the box with her penny, repeating, "Make black boy white" at intervals; when John heard a sudden rattle, and, looking down, said, "Hullo!" for the knitted glove was empty, and Mabel looked up at him with rather an awe-struck face, repeating, "Make black boy white."
"O Mr. John!" Miss Toosey exclaimed, her eyes filling with tears, "the dear, sweet little angel, giving her little all to the Mission! How touching!—how beautiful!"
John, however, whose eyes were not full of tears, saw an ominous quivering about the little angel's under lip, and an anxious feeling of knitted gloves around the "dear, darling little hole," as if the penny might yet be recovered, and as if the giver had not realized the fatal and irretrievable nature of putting into a missionary-box. The full sense of her loss at last overwhelmed her, and she burst into uncontrollable grief, "I wants my penny" being the burden of the tale.
It was in vain John handed her over to Miss Toosey who quickly supplied her with another penny, and supplemented it with a biscuit and a lump of sugar; it was not "mine penny, what papa gave me!" and at last she was carried off sobbing, and casting looks of fear and aversion at the missionary-box on the table.
That afternoon, as John was on the way to the station, he saw Miss Toosey wending her way thoughtfully up High Street, and he crossed over and joined her. She was on her way home from the rectory, and her first remark to John Rossitter was, "Do you believe in miracles, Mr. John?"
"As described in the Bible?"
"Oh, no; of course every one believes in them. I mean miracles now."
"Well, Miss Toosey, if you mean winking Virgins and hysterical peasant girls, I am afraid I am rather skeptical."
"Ah, Mr. John! that's what I thought to myself. It's popish to believe in such things nowadays,—all superstition and such like,—so I'm glad I did not tell Miss Baker what came into my head."
"May I ask what it was? I don't think you are at all popish."