She turned them over disconsolately--the needle-book for Beatrice, not too tidily sewn; the blotter for Winnie, with its brown paper cover, hastily painted with a spray of roses, and its one sheet of blotting paper begged from Father's writing-table; the pincushion for Lesbia, trimmed with a piece of washed ribbon; and the two postcard albums for Basil and Giles, made out of pieces of cardboard with slits cut in the corners. "I can afford to spend the threepennybit on Father and Martin," she thought; "but I must leave the halfpennies to rattle in my box, so that it doesn't sound empty." The village shop did not offer a very large selection of goods for an expenditure of threepence. Gwen was almost at her wits' end what to choose, and finally came away with a cake of oatmeal soap and a large red chalk pencil. Walking back up the village she met Beatrice. "I've just been to see the Casses," said the latter. "They're in awful trouble. Thomas Cass has sprained his wrist and can't go out in his boat, and Mrs. Cass is in bed with bronchitis. Johnnie's running about with his toes all through his boots, and says he can't come to church or Sunday School because he hasn't another pair." "Haven't you an old pair of Lesbia's or Stumps's?" suggested Gwen. "Not one. We sold them all at the Rummage Sale." "Then he'll have to go barefoot, I suppose." "I was wondering," said Beatrice tentatively, "if we could manage to get him a pair ourselves. Winnie would give something, I'm sure, and so would I, and so would Father." Gwen was silent. "I thought perhaps as you'd rescued him you might feel interested in him, and you'd care--" Beatrice did not finish the sentence, but looked at her sister hopefully. Gwen stared at the ground and went very red, but she said nothing, and Beatrice, after waiting a moment, turned away and entered the post office. "Of all absolute frauds, I feel the meanest!" groaned Gwen. "Beatrice will think me a perfect miser, hoarding up my money and not willing to spend a farthing on anybody! If she only knew the bankruptcy of my box! Was any wretched girl ever in such a fix? Oh! Gwen Gascoyne, you've got yourself into an atrocious mess altogether, and I don't see how you're ever going to climb out of it." Gwen's one sheet anchor of hope, to which she clung in a kind of desperation, was the thought of the postal orders that Grannie and Aunt Violet almost invariably sent at Christmas. If these did not arrive, she could not pay Netta, and then--well, any kind of catastrophe might be expected to follow. She went about with a load of lead on her heart, and a consequent shortness of temper highly trying to the rest of the family. She was grumpy with the little boys, impatient with Lesbia, and so unaccommodating over doing the decorations in church that Beatrice finally begged her to go home, saying she and Winnie could finish alone. "You two always want to get rid of me!" flared out Gwen as she stumped defiantly away.