"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_.'" Chapter IV