Now it chanced one day that the little village in which Jennifer lived was stirred by the ambition of the congregation to build a new chapel. The old place was not good enough; not even large enough. A great meeting was held, and the sluggish life of the place was quickened by a sermon from a stranger in the afternoon, followed by a public tea meeting. At night stirring speeches were made and various promises given. The well-to-do and generous layman who acted as the father of a group of village chapels in the district would give fifty pounds. One of the farmers would cart the stones. Another would give the lime. Others made promises that ranged down to a pound. There the line was drawn. Those who could do less than that did not count.
Jennifer managed to get to the meeting and sat delighted at the promises of one and another, neither envying any nor even wishing that she could do some great thing.
"I will do what I can," she said, as she shook hands with the chairman at the close of the meeting.
"I am sure you will, Jennifer, your heart is good enough for anything," said he tenderly, thinking within himself how much the least gift would cost her.
The next day Jennifer was off to the fields, and as she hoed the lines of turnips she was talking to her self of the proposed new chapel.
"Silver it must be, I am afraid; but it isn't the colour for Him. I should like to give the Lord a bit of gold. If it isn't that it must be the biggest bit of silver there is."
Then Jennifer went on hoeing the weeds to the tune of the hymn that she hummed to herself:
"Kings shall fall down before Him,
And gold and incense bring;
All nations shall adore Him,
His praise all people sing."
The tune rang out cheerily on the breeze as she went on, and the words got deeper down in her soul. For Jennifer boasted that she could sing. "If I can't do anything else I can sing," she said. There was very often a hymn on her lips and always one in her heart. She had her philosophy about singing. "I am not going to be beat by the birds, and we are nothing but a sort of creeping thing till we can sing. What's the good of the blue sky above us if we can't fly up into it? And singing is wings to my thinking."