Susan went, and soon returned with a basketful of such materials as woman's taste and skill can transform into a thousand attractive forms. The snow-flakes were falling faster and thicker; grassy lawn and gravel path were now covered with a sheet of spotless white, which hid every roughness and smoothed away every blemish. Emmie was no longer troubling herself with thoughts of her follies and failings. With the eagerness natural to youth, she was preparing for the pleasant task which she had set herself to perform, a task which would at the same time employ her fingers, amuse her mind, and quiet her conscience. See her on her knees on the hearth-rug beside the blazing fire, with her basket of odds and ends beside her, and a pile of half-worn-out clothes placed on a chair. Emmie is sorting and arranging, planning and preparing, cutting out work for herself and Susan that will keep them both happily and usefully engaged for weeks. It is wonderful how care is lightened, and what mental sunshine comes with occupations such as this. Emmie's thoughts, instead of brooding over imaginary terrors, are full of ingenious devices for improving this and altering that, making old things look new, and astonishing simple rustics by elegant trifles such as they never before could have seen. "Now take up these clothes and look to the patching," said Emmie, dismissing her maid.--"I will send at once to London for the Testaments," she added to herself after Susan had left the apartment. "My five pounds will cover that expense, as well as the cost of my simple feast,--tea and cake, oranges and buns; and then there must be a trifle for lights for my tree." Humming cheerfully to herself, Emmie rose from her kneeling position and went to her desk, which lay on the drawing-room table. She unlocked and opened it, and then took out a pocket-book within which was her five-pound note. Joe was to take the pony that day to be shod at S----, so Emmie drew out a form for a money-order for the Bible Society to be procured at the same time. Emmie, with the order and bank-note in her hand, was about to ring the bell for the footman, when Vibert entered the drawing-room. He looked at the hearth-rug, strewn with many-coloured scraps and cuttings from the overflowing basket which Emmie had been ransacking for materials for her charity work. "You here still, Vibert!" exclaimed his sister, pausing with her hand on the old-fashioned bell-rope which hung by the fire-place. "I thought that you had been for the last hour poring over your books at S----. Were you afraid of the snow that you stopped at home this morning?" "Afraid!" echoed Vibert. "No; I leave that word, like bodkins and hair-pins, for the use of the ladies. The truth is, that I wanted, before I set off for the town, to ask,--but what is that which you have in your hand?" asked the youth as his glance, and an eager glance it was, fell on his sister's five-pound note.