"It's more becoming to be heavier," Miss Lydia said. And this remark gave him such obvious satisfaction that when he went away his perpetual smile had deepened into positive heartiness.
It was after this talk that he finally added his offering to the "Present" which just then was occupying Old Chester's attention. "And how much do you suppose I got out of him?" Mrs. Barkley asked Dr. Lavendar. "$1.50!"
However, other friends were more liberal, and by the end of May the $85 (grown now into the round sum of $100) was ready for Miss Lydia. A little silk bag, with a scrap of paper twisted about its ribbon drawing-string, was thrust one evening by an unknown hand into Miss Lydia's door. In it were twenty five-dollar gold pieces. "From old friends," Dr. Lavendar had written on the scrap of paper.
"Sha'n't we say—'for repairs'?" Mrs. Barkley asked, doubtfully.
"No," Dr. Lavendar declared; "I'd rather say 'to buy curl-papers.' Of course she'll use it for repairs; but we mustn't dictate."
Nobody saw Miss Lydia gasp when she opened the bag, and sit down, and then cry and laugh, but probably every friendly heart in Old Chester was busy imagining the scene, for every friend had contributed. They had all done it in their different ways—and how character confesses itself in this matter of giving! ... Mrs. Dale, who gave the largest sum, did it with calm, impersonal kindness. Martha King said that she had so many calls upon her charity that she couldn't give much, but was glad to do what she could. Miss Harriet Hutchinson said it was a first-rate idea, and she was obliged to Mrs. Barkley for letting her have a hand in it; as for Mrs. Drayton, she said it was a great trial not to contribute, but she could not do so conscientiously. "I make such things a matter of prayer," she said; "some do not. I do not judge them. I never judge any one. But I take all such matters to the Throne of Grace, and as a result I feel that such things are injurious to a poor person, and so I must deny myself the pleasure of charity."
William Rives said that he would be pleased to contribute, and Mrs. Barkley had a moment of intense excitement when she read his check—$150. But her emotion only lasted until she put on her spectacles.
And yet, when Lydia, sitting at the kitchen table, wiped her eyes and counted her gold by the light of a candle in a hooded candlestick, she felt, somehow, William's hand in it. For, by this time, William's friendliness was beyond any question. He came to see her every other day, and he told her all his symptoms and talked of his loneliness and forlornness until they were both moved to tears.
"Poor William!" she said, her eyes overflowing with sympathy. "Well, I'm glad you have plenty of money, anyhow. It would be hard to be poor and have bad health, too."
"But I haven't plenty of money," William said, with agitation. "How did you get such an idea? I haven't!"