"How do you like this plan?" said Mrs. Ashford. "I have some rags up in the storeroom that I want picked over, the white separated from the colored, and if you will do it to-morrow afternoon, I will give you fifteen cents." "Oh, I'll do it! I'll do it!" cried Marty in delight, kissing her mother. "You're the best mamma that ever was!" "It is not pleasant work, and will probably take all your playtime," cautioned her mother. "Oh! I don't mind that," said Marty. So, although the next afternoon was remarkably pleasant, and it would have been delightful to be playing with her sled in the snow-heaped little park near by, where the other girls were, she very cheerfully spent it in the dull storeroom with an old calico wrapper over her dress, sorting rags. There were a good many to do--though she candidly said she didn't think there was more than fifteen cents' worth--and she got pretty tired. Katie offered to help, but Marty heroically refused, and earned her money fairly. The letter-rack was completed in good time, and presented. Cousin Alice said it was the very prettiest of all her gifts, besides being extremely useful. "Mamma," said Marty that evening, "I believe after all I'll go back to Edith's plan of giving 'tenths' and 'offerings' to missions." "I think that would be the better way," said her mother. "Not that I'm tired of the heathen or the mission-band, or of giving, you know, but just because--" "Yes, I understand," said her mother, as she hesitated; "you are just as much interested in the matter as ever, but you now see that there are more ways than one of doing good with money, and that it is better to give systematically, as Mrs. Howell says. Then you know what you are doing, and I dare say, taking it all in all, you will give more that way than by giving a good deal one time and nothing at all another." "Oh! I'll _never_ come to the time when I wont give anything," Marty declared emphatically. And she then truly believed she never should. CHAPTER V. THE EBONY CHAIR. For a few weeks everything went smoothly. Marty attended the meetings of the band, in which she took great interest, and put two or three pennies in her box every Sunday morning. But there came a time when she began to find it hard to give even that much. There seemed to be so many little things she wanted, and it was just the season of the year when she had very few presents of money. She generally got some on her birthday, in August, and again at Christmas; but as she could not keep money very well, that was soon spent, and during the latter part of the winter she was very poor. Once or twice nothing went in the box but the strict tenth, and once she had a hard struggle with herself before even that went in; in fact, she had a very bad time altogether. It was all owing to a tiny chair. "O girls!" exclaimed Hattie Green, one day at recess, "have you seen those lovely chairs in Harrison's window?" "What chairs?" inquired the girls.