Sack-making was hard work, and ill paid too, as most women's work is, but still Mrs. Chaplin was very glad of it, more especially as it was work she could do at home, and so be able to keep Winny company, for it was very dull for her when her mother had to go out to work, for then she was left alone for the greater part of the day. Once a week, her Sunday-school teacher came to spend an hour with her, and she generally contrived that it should be when Winny was likely to be alone. But even with this break, if the girl felt unusually ill, as she often did on these days, the time passed very slowly, although she always contrived to meet every one who came in with a cheerful smile of welcome. Miss Lavender, who knew the girl most intimately, was anxious that she should go into the hospital, but mother and father and Winny herself opposed the plan, and the doctor who came to see her sometimes did not recommend it very strongly. The little home was a happy one in spite of its poverty, and he doubted whether more could be done for her in one of the great London hospitals than was being done here. If she could go away with her mother and father to some country cottage home, it would be a different thing; then she might have a chance of getting over her weakness. But as this seemed quite out of the question, Miss Lavender had set her heart upon trying the next best thing—sending her to a country cottage home for a fortnight. Not that either she or her teacher would ever admit that she was hardly used in being shut out of so many of the pleasures of life. "God is fair and just to all," the lady would say when some of her class, who had known Winny when she was able to run about, bemoaned her fate as being a very cruel one. "It may seem cruel to us, I admit," said the lady, "but you know things are not always what they seem. If God has taken Winny from the enjoyment of some things we think it impossible to live without, you must remember we are not called to do without them. We know what these are to us; but we cannot know the secret pleasures God gives to Winny, nor the opportunities of usefulness that comes in her way. I happen to know that, by her patience and her firm belief in what I have just said to you, Winny is exercising an influence on her friends and neighbours that makes her life one of the most useful as well as the most happy, for she is quite sure that she is doing God's will as she lies there on her couch, and what higher life can anyone desire? Our Winny is one of the happiest girls I know," concluded the lady. "She always seems happy," said one. "Oh! It isn't seeming; her happiness is real and true and deep in spite of the pain she often suffers, and that she never goes outside that one room. I want you to believe this, and so does she."