“I would--and shall! I’m going to give these people one lesson in giving that they won’t forget! A Christmas box for a lot of children out on the plains and no candy in it! And Davie praying for candy!... Well! he’s going to have it. I’ll take this barrel back to town to-morrow myself; and when I come back I shall have the candy.” “Wife, you know I would be only too glad to give you the money if I had it. But I have only two cents left in my pocket until the draft comes!... Are you going to ask credit?” Asking credit was the one humiliation they had spared themselves. “No. I am going to pay money for it--good money--but I am going to have it!” In all their life together he had never seen her like this. He watched her with fascinated eyes. Going to the mantel, she took down a box with a slit in the top. It was their missionary bank and was held as sacred from profaning touch as the ark of the Lord. She was tearing it open. “Mary!” he cried, aghast. “Not the missionary money! You wouldn’t take that! ‘Will a man rob God?’” “I’d rob anybody!” she said, turning upon him like a lioness defending her young. “I’m going to have a Christmas for my children with candy in it if the heathen go--to perdition!” He saw then that she was past talking to. II It was about two weeks after this that the pastor of the First Church called a meeting of the ladies of the congregation to take action about a missionary box. “Another!” groaned several ladies who never contributed. He went on to explain that a barrel sent from the church a few weeks before had been returned, and then--not scorning to make appeal to any God-given attribute of the female mind--added: “Perhaps I should say that this barrel has been not only returned but refused. Since it was sent from the church it is a matter in which you are all interested. The president of the Missionary Society requests a full attendance.” Naturally she got it. Seldom in the annals of the First Church had there been such a meeting. “Ladies,”--the president’s tap broke upon a lively hum,--“we are called upon to face a most unprecedented state of affairs. As the meeting to-day is so much larger than the usual attendance at our Missionary Society--so very much in excess of the one that launched this enterprise”--there was marked irony in the implication--“I feel called upon to explain. At our October meeting it was decided to send a box to a poor minister’s family in the West, and you were all urged to contribute as liberally as possible. You will remember that the call was one given from the pulpit to the entire church. How you responded to that call we shall soon see.” There was a startled movement, quickly controlled, in several quarters. “I was called from the city in November and placed the packing of the box in the hands of another.” There was a slight stir in the second row, but Mrs. McArthur raised a protesting hand.