There had been three of those checks from Uncle Paul; it was wonderful how far each had been made to go. It was possible nowadays to send for a new book, when the reviews were more than especially tempting. There had also been a tea-table added to the other attractions of the side porch, not an expensive affair, but the little Japanese cups and saucers were both pretty and delicate, as was the rest of the service; while Miranda's cream cookies and sponge cakes were, as Shirley declared, good enough to be framed. Even the minister appeared now and then of an afternoon, during tea hour, and the young people, gathered on the porch, began to find him a very pleasant addition to their little company, he and they getting acquainted, as they had never gotten acquainted before. Sextoness Jane came every week now to help with the ironing, which meant greater freedom in the matter of wash dresses; and also, to Sextoness Jane herself, the certainty of a day's outing every week. To Sextoness Jane, those Tuesdays at the parsonage were little short of a dissipation. Miranda, unbending in the face of such sincere and humble admiration, was truly gracious. The glimpses the little bent, old sextoness got of the young folks, the sense of life going on about her, were as good as a play, to quote her own simile, confided of an evening to Tobias, her great black cat, the only other inmate of the old cottage. "I reckon Uncle Paul would be rather surprised," Pauline said one evening, "if he could know all the queer sorts of ways in which we use his money. But the little easings-up do count for so much." "Indeed they do," Hilary agreed warmly, "though it hasn't all gone for easings-ups, as you call them, either." She had sat down right in the middle of getting ready for bed, to revel in her ribbon box; she so loved pretty ribbons! The committee on finances, as Pauline called her mother, Hilary, and herself, held frequent meetings. "And there's always one thing," the girl would declare proudly, "the treasury is never entirely empty." She kept faithful account of all money received and spent; each month a certain amount was laid away for the "rainy day"--which meant, really, the time when the checks should cease to come---"for, you know, Uncle Paul only promised them for the _summer_," Pauline reminded the others, and herself, rather frequently. Nor was all of the remainder ever quite used up before the coming of the next check. "You're quite a business woman, my dear," Mr. Shaw said once, smiling over the carefully recorded entries in the little account-book she showed him. "We must have named you rightly."