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."
* * * * *
Eight months had gone by, and the time had come for the opening of the
new chapel.
Then it was that Jennifer came cautiously to her friend and asked to
speak to him privately. They went down the road together, and as soon as
they were past the houses of the village she stopped and took carefully
from her pocket a little piece of paper which she put into his hands.
"There," she said, "that is for the new chapel."
He opened it and found a half sovereign. "I am so glad to give a bit of
that colour, sir," and Jennifer's face beamed with joy.
But the good man started, quite frightened. "I cannot take it, Jennifer.
Really I must not. Half a sovereign from you? No, it would not be
right."
Jennifer pushed back his hand as he held it out to her. "Not take it!"
she cried. "But you must take it, sir; 'tis the Lord's."
"But really you cannot afford it. It is very good of you."
"But I _have_ afforded it, you see," she laughed; "and I am going to
afford another before I have done."
He held the coin reluctantly in his hand. "It really hurts me to think
of it; and you so poor as you are."
"Well, I am sorry to hurt anybody. But there's no need to be hurt about
it a bit. I thought when I rang out that half sovereign that it was the
prettiest music I ever heard, or shall hear till I get up among the
angels. And they don't have a chance of anything like that, I expect."
And she laughed again.
"Well, Jennifer, I suppose I must take it," and he opened his collecting
book to enter the subscription with her name, but she checked him
instantly.
"No, sir, no. You must put it in the box. I did not mean to let anybody
know, but I could not tell how to manage it. If I put it in the box my
own self, why some of them might see me, and then I was afraid they
might be after stopping my half a crown a week and my loaf of bread,
thinking that I had come into a fortune all of a sudden." And she
laughed again.
"No, Jennifer; we must have it down among the subscriptions, and it
ought really to head the list. I will call it _Anonymous_, you know."
"Oh, that's much too fine a name for Jennifer Petch. Call it '_Gold and
Incense_.' I _do_ know what that do mean, if anybody else don't," and
Jennifer laughed again.
And so it was entered, and so it was duly announced. Jennifer blushed
and laughed so much when it was read that any suspicious person might
have found out her secret after all. But no one dreamed that this was
Jennifer's assumed name.
It was not long before her good friend met with Jennifer again.
"I can't get over that half-sovereign of yours, Jennifer," he began. "I
am really quite curious to know how you managed it. You will tell me,
won't you?"
"Well, I s'pose I must," said Jennifer shyly; "but I meant to keep it
all to myself, you know. Nobody knows about it but you."
"Well, then, I may know all, mayn't I?"
Little by little it all came out. And this was Jennifer's story:
"Well, it was the day after the meeting that I was singing to myself
the words,--
"Kings shall fall down before Him,
And gold and incense bring,"
when it seemed to me like as if I could see them coming like Solomon in
all his glory, and laying down their gifts at His dear feet; but, there,
you will be getting all my secret out of me. It must come, I s'pose.
Well, the tune and the words were sort of ringing in my head when I
turned round out of the wind for to--to---- You mustn't be hard on me.
It was to take a _pinch of snuff_."
"Oh, Jennifer!"
"It was only a penn'orth a week, sir," she pleaded, "And it did seem to
sharpen me up a bit out in the cold. Well, while I was taking it I
laughed to myself. 'That's the nearest to _incense_ that I can think
of,' I said. 'I will give that to the Lord.' And, bless you, sir, would
you believe it? I got to turning round out of the wind to make believe I
had it, and it did every bit so well.
[Illustration]
"The next Saturday, instead of giving the penny to a neighbour to get
the snuff into market, I put the penny into an old broken teapot, and
put it on top of the dresser, and I said, 'There's a nest egg, then.'
Well, I quite longed for the next Saturday to come, and then there was a
penny more. And in three weeks there was a threepenny bit. I did think
that was a prettier colour for the Lord, but, bless you, I liked the
three pennies better.
"That tiny little threepenny bit in that great teapot! I was most ready
to cry for it in there all by its lonely little self. I couldn't help
thinking about it till it came to be almost like when I had to leave the
baby home and couldn't think of anything else, and thought I heard it
a-crying whenever so much as a lamb would bleat or a horniwink go crying
overhead.[A]
[A] A horniwink is in that dialect a green plover or lapwing.
"My heart sort of went out to the poor little threepenny bit. 'You shall
have company, my dear,' I said to myself, 'that you shall, before very
long.'
"That night when I got home I was just going to get my cup o' tea, when
it came to my mind, 'There's company for the poor little thing.' At
first I tried to put away the thought, for I did dearly love my cup o'
tea. Coming home tired and wet and cold, it was wonderful how it used to
cheer and refresh a body. So I tried to think of something else. But the
more I tried the more I couldn't. At last I sat down by the bit of fire
and had it out with myself before I went to bed.
"'You know,' I said to myself, 'a penny a week--what's that? Why, a
whole year will only come to less than a crown piece. Gold and incense
indeed, they are a long way off at that rate.' Then I got down the
broken teapot and looked in. I had to turn it round and round before I
could so much as see it. And when I did I was fair ashamed of myself.
'Poor little thing,' I said, 'and to think that you must wait three
weeks for company! No, you shan't.'
"Well, I put it back again and then screwed up my courage to see what I
could make believe for tea. At last I thought I would toast some
crusties till they were nice and brown. Then I would pour the boiling
water on them. 'The colour will be right enough,' I said, 'but what
about the taste, I wonder? However, taste as they mind to, there's
threepence a week!' So I went to bed, and that night I dreamed that the
broken teapot was so full of sovereigns that I was quite frightened and
woke all of a tremble.
"I dare say it didn't taste exactly right at the first going off. But
very soon I came to like it just as well. And I really do believe,
after all said and done, 'tis more strengthener and more nourishinger
than the tea.
"So the next Saturday, instead of asking a neighbour to bring home an
ounce of tea, I put the threepenny bit in the broken teapot. And there
was fourpence a week. And I changed it into a shilling; and then it grew
into a half-crown; and last of all it came to _half a sovereign_.
"I was glad to have a bit of that colour. It was years since I had so
much as seen one of them. 'Tis the only colour that is good enough for
Him. And I haven't done yet, please God. In eight months' time there
will be another, and that will make a whole sovereign. It isn't like
doing the thing at all to do it by halves. That is what I have set my
heart upon. That will be '_Gold and Incense--One Pound_.'"