CHAPTER V.
Miracles do not happen every day; and Miss Toosey's money-box did not contain a bank note the next time it was opened, or any sum that Miss Toosey could not well account for; indeed, it was rather less than more than she expected, even though the cost of her sitting in church was added to it. She did not, however, carry out her plan of sitting in the free seats, for when she spoke to Mr. Budd about giving up her seat, Mr. Peters happened to be present, and he would not hear of such a thing. "Why, Miss Toosey, we should not know ourselves if you were not in your usual place." And Mr. Budd added, that "Some one, as did not wish to be mentioned, had offered to pay the rent rather than Miss Toosey should give it up." So it was arranged that she should still occupy the seat, at any rate till it was wanted for some one else; and as the Martel congregation were not overflowing, Miss Toosey was not likely to be turned out. She did not quite like this arrangement: she felt rather like an impostor as she passed the free seats, and Mr. Wyatt opened the pew-door for her; and it took off much of the pleasure when she dropped the money (that would otherwise have been paid to Mr. Budd) into her box; for, as she said, she did not feel the want of it, so it hardly seemed like giving at all.
I must not stop to describe at any length Miss Toosey's other missionary efforts, though she did not forget the other barley-loaves of which the Bishop had spoken,—"her time, her influence, and her prayers,"—or I could tell you of her numerous disappointments in answering advertisements such as,—"To those of either sex anxious to increase their income;" and "£2 weekly easily realized;" and of her venturing a 5s. subscription to a "Ladies' Needlework Society," which entitled her to send six articles for sale to a shop in a fashionable part of London; and how she accomplished an antimacassar of elaborate design to send up there. As to her influence, that was a puzzling matter to one who had such a humble opinion of herself as Miss Toosey; and she nearly worked herself into a nervous fever through her attempts to mention the subject to some of the wealthy shopkeepers or others in Martel; and at last she adopted the plan of distributing leaflets, and invested in a small bundle on missionary subjects, which she left about in a surreptitious, stealthy way, in shops, or at the railway station, or slipped between the pages of a "Society" book, or even sometimes on the high road, with a stone to keep them from blowing away. Even with these precautions she managed to give great offence to Mrs. Gardener Jones, who found a leaflet in a book sent on from Miss Toosey's, and who, being of a very dark complexion and Eastern cast of countenance, took the matter as a personal insinuation about her birth. So it was quite a relief to Miss Toosey to run to the last barley-loaf that the Bishop had mentioned,—"her prayers;" at any rate, she could give that with all her heart. She found a missionary prayer in an old magazine, written in an inflated, pompous style, with long words and involved sentences, as different as possible from the great simplicity of that prayer in which children of all ages and degrees of learning through all time are taught to address "Our Father;" but she was not critical; and the feeling she expressed in those words was not rendered less simple or earnest by its pompous clothing.
"Where is Miss Toosey?" John Rossitter asked his mother one Sunday morning, as they drove home from church; "she was not there this morning."
"Well, I think I heard some one say she was ill. Yes, it was Mr. Ryder told me she was laid up with cold or something. She has not been at church for several Sundays; and really the draught from the vestry door is dreadful."
After church that evening, a sudden impulse seized John to go and see how Miss Toosey was; and when he had packed his mother into the brougham, with her rugs and furs, he turned off towards North Street, among the groups of people returning from church. It was a cold October evening, with great, solemn, bright stars overhead, and a frosty stillness in the air, which sets one listening for something above the trifling noises of this little world. Sunday visitors were rare at Miss Toosey's and, as Betty said, "It give her quite a turn" when John's sharp knock came at the door.
"She's very middlin'," she said, in answer to John's inquiries; "and she've been terribly low this evening, as ain't like her."
"What's the matter?"
"Well, Mr. Ryder do say as it's the brongtypus and indigestion of the lungs," said Betty in an awful voice, feeling that so many syllables must prove fatal; "and as I was setting by the latching fire last night a coffin popped right out, and"—