It was a patient little voice that interrupted the distracted girl. Its owner had been into the room three times already, with the same object, to ask the pathetic question. 'Oh, don't worry me, Queenie dear! I'm just as anxious as yourself to go on the water; but there's three halfpence gone astray, and I--I can't find it out!' half sobbed Theo, who was getting nervous over the troublesome figures. Queenie, a small, sedate maiden of five, a miniature of Theo in face, stood silent in the doorway for a few seconds, wistfully piecing out the possible meaning of her tall sister's bewildered grief. Then she disappeared. 'Theo, look!' Theo glanced through her fingers, and Queenie, who had been struggling with the clasp of what looked like a doll-purse, proudly spread out three halfpennies so remarkably clean and bright that they had unmistakably been carefully washed by their small owner. 'You may have these, Theo, 'stead of the three you've lost. Please take them. I don't weally want them, for I've still got five ha'pennies left!' The small woman spoke urgently. 'Oh, my darling Queenie, you don't understand! I could have done that myself--I could have put in three halfpence, and made all right, but it would have been all wrong in another way. Listen now, and I shall try to explain to you.' Placing her arm round Queenie's little neck, Theo tried to make the child understand that such a proceeding would not be fair, nor upright, nor honest. It would not be getting out of the difficulty; it would rather be making it a deeper one. 'What's difficulties?' abruptly asked Queenie, with her round, solemn eyes gazing into her sister's face. 'Difficulties are things made on purpose to be conquered in the right way,' said Theo, after a pause of consideration. 'I think,' she added, 'that God puts them in our way, very often, just to try us.' 'Oh, if God makes difficulties, they must be quite right, mustn't they, Theo?' 'Yes, yes!' was the quick response; and Theo, fired afresh, shut out the fair picture of the tiny speaker whose grave, sweet face looked out of a tangle of fine-spun, golden hair. Covering her eyes, she applied herself with renewed vigour to the detested task before her. Queenie, who had oftentimes witnessed such struggles before, knew better than to utter another word; the child stood perfectly still. There was no sound in the room but the ticking of the clock and the cracking of the seeds with which Miss Pollina, the old grey parrot in the cage by the window, amused herself unceasingly from morn until night. Even Miss Pollina seemed to be aware that perfect quietness was necessary for the present, and she had hushed her usual chatter.