"I am but a poor parson's wife," said she, "but I am thankful they will receive even such poor offerings as I can bring." And she brought those embroidered Cordova gloves, the search for which had so incensed Aunt Dorothy. "It is remarkable," she observed, "that I always said one never knew what use anything might be in a poor parson's household; and now I have found the use." "What use, my dear," said Aunt Dorothy; "do you think the Parliament soldiers will fight in embroidered gloves?" "Spanish leather is dear," replied Placidia, "and things will always sell. It is only a poor mite I know, but so is a thimble. The Parliament soldiers cannot, of course, fight in thimbles any more than in gloves, and the widow's mite was accepted." "A mite and the 'widow's mite,' are some way apart, my dear," said Aunt Dorothy; "your 'widow's mite,' I suppose, might be the parsonage and the glebe, and those cows in your uncle's park and meadow. Take care what you offer to the Lord. He sometimes takes us at our word. And there are plunderers abroad who take their own estimate of people's mites, widows' and others." Said Placidia, never taken aback-- "Aunt Dorothy, Mr. Nicholls and I regard the glebe as a sacred trust, of which we feel we must on no account relinquish the smallest fraction. And as to the cows Uncle Drayton gave me, I wonder you can suspect me of such ingratitude as to give them up to any one." "I did not, my dear," said Aunt Dorothy, quietly. "What shall I label your Cordova gloves? A parson's mite? You know I cannot exactly say 'widow's.'" "An orphan's perhaps, Aunt Dorothy." "Very well, my dear," said Aunt Dorothy; "I should think that would affect the Parliament very much. It may even get into history." With which this little passage at arms closed. Happily for the popular cause, the common interpretation of acceptable 'mites' differed from Placidia's, so that in a short time a considerable army was levied. The navy ever remained true to the Parliament; irritated, some foolish persons said, by a report that the king had called them "water-rats." As well say the whole Parliament stood firm, because the king once compared them to cats. The navy had its own watchwords, better pointed than by the sting of a sorry jest. English seamen were not likely to trust too implicitly to the promises of the Sovereign who had tried to sell them to aid in the destruction of the brave little band of beleaguered Protestants at Rochelle. All through the summer the armies were being levied, and the breach was silently widening.