She took the money and the bottle, and went over to the shop. Wistfully she looked at the tempting oranges in the window, as she gave the money for the liquor,--and thought how glad her poor mother would be to have one. As she was hurrying back, she saw a thick rusty iron ring lying in the street: she picked it up, and kept on her way. It felt heavy, and her heart bounded with the thought that now she could buy the orange for her mother. The piece of old iron was dropped in the yard, as she passed through. After her father had taken a dram, he sat down to his supper. While he was eating it, Jane went into the cellar and brought out into the yard her little treasure of scrap iron. As she passed backwards and forwards before the door facing which her father sat, he observed her, and felt a sudden curiosity to know what she was doing. He went softly to the window, and as he did so, he saw her gathering the iron, which she had placed in a little pile, into her apron. Then she rose up quickly, and passed out of the yard-gate into the street. The father went back to his supper, but his appetite was gone. There was that in the act of his child, simple as it was, that moved his feelings, in spite of himself. All at once he thought of the orange she had asked for her mother; and he felt a conviction that it was to buy an orange that Jane was now going to sell the iron she had evidently been collecting since dinner-time. "How selfish and wicked I am!" he said to himself, almost involuntarily. In a few minutes Jane returned, and with her hand under her apron, passed through the room where he sat into her mother's chamber. An impulse, almost irresistible, caused him to follow her in a few moments after. "It is so grateful!" he heard his wife say, as he opened the door. On entering her chamber, he found her sitting up in bed eating the orange, while little Jane stood by her looking into her face with an air of subdued, yet heartfelt gratification. All this he saw at a glance, yet did not seem to see, for he pretended to be searching for something, which, apparently obtained, he left the room and the house, with feelings of acute pain and self-upbraidings. "Come, let us go and see these cold-water men," said a companion, whom he met a few steps from his own door. "They are carrying all the world before them." "Very well, come along." And the two men bent their steps towards Temperance Hall. When little Jane's father turned from the door of that place, his name was signed to the pledge, and his heart fixed to abide by it. On his way home, he saw some grapes in a window,--he bought some of them, and a couple of oranges and lemons. When he came home, he--went into his wife's chamber, and opening the paper that contained the first fruits of his sincere repentance, laid them before her, and said, with tenderness, while the moisture dimmed his eyes-- "I thought these would taste good to you, Mary, and so I bought them."