She did not forget her disappointment as many a child would.  It had been too grievous.  It hurt too deeply to think that she could not go to that Sunday School, and that other little girls who wanted to go must stay away.  With quivering lip she told her mother there wasn’t room for her.  With a sad little heart she spent the afternoon thinking about it, and when bedtime came and she said her prayers, she prayed with a child’s beautiful faith that they would find room for her so that she might go and learn more about Jesus.  Perhaps she had heard some word dropped about faith and works.  Perhaps the childish mind thought it out for herself.  But she arose the next morning with a strong purpose in her childish soul, a purpose so big in faith, so firm in determination, it could put many a strong man’s efforts to the blush.  “I will save my money,” she said to herself, “and build a bigger Sunday School.  Then we can all go.”

From her childish treasures she hunted out a little red pocketbook and in this she put her pennies, one at a time.  What temptations that childish soul struggled with no one may know!  How she shut her eyes and steeled her heart to playthings her friends bought, to the allurements of the candy shop window!  But nothing turned her from her purpose.  Penny by penny the little hoard grew.  Day after day the dimpled fingers counted it and the bright eyes grew brighter as the sum mounted.  That mite cast in by the widow was no purer, greater offering than these pennies so lovingly and heroically saved by this little child.

But there were only a few weeks of this planning, hoping, saving.  The little Temple builder fell ill.  It was a brief illness and then the grim Reaper knocked at the door of the Wiatt home and the loving, self-sacrificing spirit was born to the Father’s House where there are many mansions, where there was no lack of room, for the little heart so eager to learn more of Jesus.

With her dying breath she told her mother of her treasure, told her it was for Grace Baptist Church to build.

In the little red pocketbook was just fifty-seven cents.  That was her legacy.  With swelling heart, the pastor reverently took it; with misty eyes and broken voice he told his people of the little one’s gift.

“And when they heard how God had blessed them with so great an inheritance, there was silence in the room; the silence of tears and earnest consecration.  The corner stone of the Temple was laid.”

CHAPTER XX

BUILDING THE TEMPLE

How the Money was Raised.  Walking Clubs.  Jug Breaking.  The Purchase of the Lot.  Laying the Corner Stone.

Thus was their path pointed out to them and they walked steadily forward in it from that day.

Plans were made for raising money.  The work went forward with a vim, for ever before each worker was the thought of that tiny girl, the precious pennies saved one by one by childish self-denial.  The child’s faith was equaled by theirs.  It was a case of “Come unto me on the water.”  They were poor.  Nobody could give much.  But nobody hesitated.