“N. B.—Buttons or broken sleeve-links dropped in the bank will be traced to their source by experienced experts, and humiliation will follow.”
This high-sounding document proved very efficacious, and Bell Burgoyne and Fannie Holmes, the anonymous committee, found themselves in possession of five dollars from the collection and two dollars which were revealed by the opening of the little tin bank.
That was an unnecessarily large sum to spend for ribbon, Miss Blake said, and proposed that the boxing and expressing back of the dressed dolls should be paid out of it, and if any were still left after the purchases were judiciously made it should be deposited in the tin bank as a nest-egg, not for a rainy day, but for a day when Mrs. Abbott’s brother should come, as he had promised to make her a visit, and tell them stories that would, as Lily had said once, wring their hearts, and their purses, too, and make them long to give even a trifle of help to the unhappy creatures he told them of, whose only crime was their being girls.
For Mr. Eaton was a returned missionary, laid aside from his work, long before years or failing health had enfeebled him, by an accident which had nearly destroyed his sight. He was intending to spend the Christmas holidays with his sister, and the girls, who remembered his visit of last year with pleasure, were glad to know that they should find him at school when they returned from their two-weeks’ vacation.
Edna shrugged her shoulders when she heard the others rejoicing at the prospect of having this minister in the house.
“You’re a queer lot, here,” she said. “Now, at Madame de Lanay’s all the girls thought ministers were horrid, stiff, solemn things, looking shocked if any one laughed and all the time poking texts at people. Goodness! It makes me low-spirited just to think of being in the house with one of the walking funerals.”
“Walking funerals!” and Delia Howland burst into shrieks of laughter. “Why, Edna, my father’s a minister, and he is the liveliest, jolliest man I ever saw.”
“Well, I’m sure I beg your pardon, Del, for not remembering there was a minister’s daughter present, and I’m sure it’s very nice in you to think so much of your father.”
“Yes, it’s very obliging of her,” said Lily, dryly; “but Delia’s father, nice as he is, is not the only cheerful minister. You will have to change your mind, if you think they are all a mournful lot, when you see Mr. Eaton. He has had sorrow upon sorrow, Mrs. Abbott says, and yet he is so cheerful that he brightens up the whole house.”