This day, things did not go quite to the tailor's mind. He took Poppie to a little public-house which he had known for many years, for it was kept by a cousin of his. There he ordered his half-pint of beer, carried it with him to a little arbor in the garden, now getting very bare of its sheltering leaves, sat down with Poppie, pulled out big Bible, and began to read to her. But he could not get her to mind him. Every other moment she was up and out of the arbor, now after one thing, now after another; now it was a spider busily rolling up a fly in his gluey weft; now it was a chicken escaped from the hen-house, and scratching about as if it preferred finding its own living even in an irregular fashion; and now a bird of the air that sowed not nor reaped, and yet was taken care of. "Come along, Poppie," said her father; "I want you to listen." "Yes, daddie," Poppie would answer, returning instantly; but in a moment, ere a sentence was finished, she would be half across the garden. He gave it up in despair. "Why ain't you reading, daddie?" she said, after one of these excursions. "Because you won't listen to a word of it, Poppie." "Oh! yes; here I am," she said. "Come, then; I will teach you to read." "Yes," said Poppie, and was off after another sparrow. "Do you know that God sees you, Poppie?" asked Mr. Spelt. "I don't mind," answered Poppie. He sighed and closed his book, drank the last of his half-pint of beer, and rose to go. Poppie seemed to feel that she had displeased him, for she followed without a word. They went across the fields to Hampstead, and then across more fields to the Finchley Road. In passing the old church, the deeper notes of the organ reached their ears. "There," said Poppie; "I suppose that's God making his thunder. Ain't it, daddie?" "No. It's not that," answered Spelt. "It's there he keeps it, anyhow," said Poppie. "I've heard it coming out many a time." "Was you never in one o' them churches?" asked her father. "No," answered Poppie. "Would you like to go?" he asked again, with the hope that something might take hold of her. "If you went with me," she said. Now Mr. Spelt had heard of Mr. Fuller from Mr. Kitely, and had been once to hear him preach. He resolved to take Poppie to his church that evening. My reader will see that the child had already made some progress. She talked at least. How this began I cannot explain. No fresh sign of thought or of conscience in a child comes into my notice but I feel it like a miracle--a something that cannot be accounted for save in attributing it to a great Thought that can account for it.