"I should want," Miss Gold said, "to leave you absolute discretion as to keeping these things on or stopping them whenever you thought best. A time comes when the usefulness of almost all charities seems to be exhausted. The difficulty, of course, is to keep one's helpers keen. The transmission of enthusiasm is the hardest of all operations. "And then," she continued, "there would be a sum for minor needs. Every one knows of small wants--'deserving cases,' as the phrase is. Mr. Falconer has told me of two people I should like to do something for, although it is a question, as Mr. Trist says, if it is possible to help failures. I mean that poor old cataloguer at Bemerton's and the waterman at the corner. I believe that one ought to be able to think out something even for them; but I know how difficult it is, because I have tried. I have given just such a man as the waterman an overcoat, but he pawned it at once. "And I have a great belief, rarely shaken," Miss Gold went on, "in the value of surprise gifts. I lie here longing to project five-pound notes, ten-pound notes, even twenty-pound notes (if there are such things) on to the breakfast-tables of poor clerks' wives who know what a holiday is but cannot take one, and brave typists who live on tea and bread and butter, and ladies in reduced circumstances who retain a little vanity but have no means to gratify it." "Oh yes!" Naomi exclaimed, with shining eyes. "But how can I learn about such needs, lying here as I do?" said my dear generous Agnes. "One can apply money well in that way only after making inquiries and moving much among people, observing and observing. But you two will have to do it," she added triumphantly, "because I am setting apart a sum the interest of which is solely to be used in that way." I gasped, and Naomi looked at me and laughed. "But tell me," Miss Gold said to Naomi, "something about your poor people." And Naomi kept us laughing by her droll descriptions--laughing and sympathising too. Most of her stories unite the comic and the pathetic in perfectly equal proportions. There is an old lady in reduced circumstances in North London, for example, who lives in a large house (her own) with one small servant, and lets a few rooms. She was lately, when Naomi called on her, out of lodgers and all alone, her little servant being on a brief holiday. "But aren't you very lonely?" Naomi asked. "I am, rather," she admitted. "In fact, I don't know what I should do if it wasn't for this"--pointing to a pill-box at her side--"but I hear it moving now and then, and it seems to be company." The pill-box contained a jumping bean. Just before we left, Naomi went into the paddock to take to the horses a bag of little carrots which she had brought on purpose. "What a dear girl!" said Miss Gold. "Yes," I said. We were silent for a little while. "She should marry," then said Miss Gold. "Some man much older than herself. What about Herbert Trist?"