On the contrary, though she was secretive with her near acquaintances, she would become greatly communicative with a casual vendor of books, or even a vagrant to whom she had given a cup of tea, that English equivalent for a cup of cold water. She was so fearful of falling behind in sympathy with sinners that she fell into the unusual error of treating them better than the saints. She was fond of doing small generosities, especially to children, who were half afraid of her but who would eat the big Victoria plums she gave them (leading them stealthily round to the back of the house to do so), and recognize that in some sedate and mysterious way they had a friend. She would send presents to young people whose conduct had pleased her, gifts which always excited surprise and sometimes derision. Once she sent the substantial gift of a sack of potatoes to a young husband and wife, but the present became chiefly an amusing recollection, because, not having string, she had sewed the sack with darning-wool, with the result that it burst open on the station platform before it reached its destination. A number of books, some of an old-fashioned theology, had been left to Anne by an aunt who had had a son a Methodist preacher. This aunt had also left her a black silk dress, which Anne had received with the joyful exclamation that she knew she was really a king's daughter. The books she read ardently and critically, underlining and marking, and with them also she embarrassed the vicar to whom she lent them. He, being a kind man, took the books and her comments in spite of his wife's indignation. They had formed the standard of her conversation, which was in ceremonial moments antiquated and dignified. Young women, and older men with wives to guide their perceptions, thought her absurd, but young men seldom did so. Perhaps that was because she seldom thought _them_ absurd, and understood something of the ambitions with which their heads were filled. They were not, indeed, unlike those with which her own was overflowing. Whenever she was angry it was at any meanness or injustice, which seemed to arouse in her a Biblical passion of righteous fury. A small meanness in another depressed her as much as if she had done it herself. Once she had walked five miles to deliver some butter and returned utterly dejected, not alone from fatigue, but because she had been offered nothing to eat or drink after her long tramp. It would have been useless to point out to her that she had gone on a purely business errand. It was one of those small meannesses of which she was herself incapable, and a proportion of warmth had died out of her belief.