  'Granny,' said Ethel Day, one Sunday, 'there was a lady in our seat at church that I never saw before. She was not very grandly dressed, but she must have been as rich—as rich as the king.' 'Why do you think so, Ethel?' asked Granny, smiling at the child's eagerness. 'Because, when the plate was passed to her—for the collection, you know—she put in a piece of gold money—real gold, I am sure it was. Oh! I should like to be rich enough to give as much as that.' Granny was silent for a minute or two; she seemed to be thinking of something pleasant. 'I know of a golden offering that my little Ethel could make, if she were willing,' she said presently. 'Tell me what it is then, Granny: I shall be sure to be willing,' cried Ethel. 'The money the lady gave,' went on Granny, 'was for the poor sick people in the hospital. Look out of the window, Ethel, and you will see another kind of gold—a kind not counted so precious, perhaps, but really quite as beautiful.' Ethel looked out: she only saw the flowers in her own garden. Lovely autumn flowers they were, for Ethel's father was a gardener, and he often gave his little daughter choice roots, or cuttings, for her plot of ground. But Ethel was accustomed to the sight of her flowers: dear as they were to her, and yellow as gold though they might be, Granny surely did not mean to compare them with the lady's half-sovereign. That was Granny's meaning, however. 'There is a sick woman in the village,' she told Ethel, 'who cannot go to the hospital. She is so ill that, although she may live many years, she can never be cured, and so they cannot take her in. Because her illness has lasted so long, people have almost forgotten to be kind to her. I have been thinking, Ethel, that if you could spare a bunch of your flowers for poor Mary Ansell, it would be a real golden offering.' It was Ethel's turn to be quiet now; her flowers were her most cherished possessions, and to pick a good bunch for Mary Ansell would make her little garden look bare and shabby. Granny knew that; she knew that Ethel's flowers would, in their way, be quite as costly a gift as the lady's golden coin. But she was not much surprised, on the following morning, to find the best and brightest of the blossoms gone, and when next she went to see Mary Ansell, the poor woman still had the flowers in a jug by her bedside. 'You cannot think how it cheered me up,' said the invalid. 'That dear little girl, with her bright face, and the posy in her hands, was like a sunbeam coming in. She did me as much good as a mint of money.' 'Ah!' thought Granny, who knew how much real self-sacrifice must have been in the gift, 'I felt sure that Ethel too could make a golden offering.' |
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