Curiously enough, her first throbs of conscience were not for herself but for her father.  The portly gentleman who occasionally sat at the head of the Shipley pew, and who certainly never parted company with his pocket-book on Sabbath or on any other day, did he give liberally to Foreign Missions?

She could not determine as to the probabilities of the case.  He was counted a liberal man—­people liked to come to him to start subscriptions; but Flossy felt instinctively that a subscription paper with her father’s name leading it was different, someway, from a quiet, baize-lined box, and no noise nor words.  She doubted whether the cause had been materially helped by him.

She lost some sentences of the story while she planned ways for interesting her father and securing liberal donations from him; and then she was suddenly startled back to personality by hearing some astounding statements from the reader.

“It would be so easy to drop into a household box the price of an apple, or a paper, or a glass of peanuts, and yet who does it?  Why, there are young ladies who will actually not give two cents a week from the money that they waste!”

The rich blood mounted in waves to Flossy’s forehead.  Apples and papers were not in her line, but peanuts! wasn’t there a certain stand which she passed almost daily on her way down town, and did she ever pass it without indulging in a glass of peanuts?  Neither was that the end.  Why, once started on that list, and her wastes were almost numberless.  How fond she was of cream dates, and how expensive they were; and oranges, the tempting yellow globes were always shining at her from certain windows as she passed.

Oh, they were just endless, her temptations and her falls in that direction—­only who had ever supposed that there was any harm in this lavish treatment of herself and of any friends whom she happened to meet?  Yet it was true that she had never given any money at all to the work of sending the Bible to those who are without it.

“They will not give two cents a week,” said Mrs. Miller.  It was true:  she had not given “two cents a week,” or even two cents a year—­she had simply ignored the existence of such a need for money.  True, she had not been a Christian; but she was surprised to see how little this refuge served her.

“I have been a human being,” she told herself, with a flush on her face, “and I ought to have had sufficient interest in humanity to have wanted those poor creatures civilized.”

But there was another thrust preparing for Flossy.  The reader presently touched upon one item of expenditure common to ladies, namely, kid gloves; and made the bewildering statement that economy in this matter, to the degree that needless purchases should be avoided, would treble the fund in the missionary treasury!  It could not be that from among that sea of faces the speaker had singled out Flossy Shipley, and yet