Now it chanced one day that the little village in which Jennifer lived was stirred by the ambition of the congregation to build a new chapel. The old place was not good enough; not even large enough. A great meeting was held, and the sluggish life of the place was quickened by a sermon from a stranger in the afternoon, followed by a public tea meeting. At night stirring speeches were made and various promises given. The well-to-do and generous layman who acted as the father of a group of village chapels in the district would give fifty pounds. One of the farmers would cart the stones. Another would give the lime. Others made promises that ranged down to a pound. There the line was drawn. Those who could do less than that did not count.

Jennifer managed to get to the meeting and sat delighted at the promises of one and another, neither envying any nor even wishing that she could do some great thing.

"I will do what I can," she said, as she shook hands with the chairman at the close of the meeting.

"I am sure you will, Jennifer, your heart is good enough for anything," said he tenderly, thinking within himself how much the least gift would cost her.

The next day Jennifer was off to the fields, and as she hoed the lines of turnips she was talking to her self of the proposed new chapel.

"Silver it must be, I am afraid; but it isn't the colour for Him. I should like to give the Lord a bit of gold. If it isn't that it must be the biggest bit of silver there is."

Then Jennifer went on hoeing the weeds to the tune of the hymn that she hummed to herself:

The tune rang out cheerily on the breeze as she went on, and the words got deeper down in her soul. For Jennifer boasted that she could sing. "If I can't do anything else I can sing," she said. There was very often a hymn on her lips and always one in her heart. She had her philosophy about singing. "I am not going to be beat by the birds, and we are nothing but a sort of creeping thing till we can sing. What's the good of the blue sky above us if we can't fly up into it? And singing is wings to my thinking."

Eight months had gone by, and the time had come for the opening of the new chapel.

Then it was that Jennifer came cautiously to her friend and asked to speak to him privately. They went down the road together, and as soon as they were past the houses of the village she stopped and took carefully from her pocket a little piece of paper which she put into his hands.

"There," she said, "that is for the new chapel."

He opened it and found a half sovereign. "I am so glad to give a bit of that colour, sir," and Jennifer's face beamed with joy.

But the good man started, quite frightened. "I cannot take it, Jennifer. Really I must not. Half a sovereign from you? No, it would not be right."

Jennifer pushed back his hand as he held it out to her. "Not take it!" she cried. "But you must take it, sir; 'tis the Lord's."

"But really you cannot afford it. It is very good of you."

"But I have afforded it, you see," she laughed; "and I am going to afford another before I have done."

He held the coin reluctantly in his hand. "It really hurts me to think of it; and you so poor as you are."

"Well, I am sorry to hurt anybody. But there's no need to be hurt about it a bit. I thought when I rang out that half sovereign that it was the prettiest music I ever heard, or shall hear till I get up among the angels. And they don't have a chance of anything like that, I expect." And she laughed again.

"Well, Jennifer, I suppose I must take it," and he opened his collecting book to enter the subscription with her name, but she checked him instantly.

"No, sir, no. You must put it in the box. I did not mean to let anybody know, but I could not tell how to manage it. If I put it in the box my own self, why some of them might see me, and then I was afraid they might be after stopping my half a crown a week and my loaf of bread, thinking that I had come into a fortune all of a sudden." And she laughed again.

"No, Jennifer; we must have it down among the subscriptions, and it ought really to head the list. I will call it Anonymous, you know."

"Oh, that's much too fine a name for Jennifer Petch. Call it 'Gold and Incense.' I do know what that do mean, if anybody else don't," and Jennifer laughed again.

And so it was entered, and so it was duly announced. Jennifer blushed and laughed so much when it was read that any suspicious person might have found out her secret after all. But no one dreamed that this was Jennifer's assumed name.

It was not long before her good friend met with Jennifer again.

"I can't get over that half-sovereign of yours, Jennifer," he began. "I am really quite curious to know how you managed it. You will tell me, won't you?"

"Well, I s'pose I must," said Jennifer shyly; "but I meant to keep it all to myself, you know. Nobody knows about it but you."

"Well, then, I may know all, mayn't I?"

Little by little it all came out. And this was Jennifer's story:

"Well, it was the day after the meeting that I was singing to myself the words,—

when it seemed to me like as if I could see them coming like Solomon in all his glory, and laying down their gifts at His dear feet; but, there, you will be getting all my secret out of me. It must come, I s'pose. Well, the tune and the words were sort of ringing in my head when I turned round out of the wind for to—to—— You mustn't be hard on me. It was to take a pinch of snuff."

"Oh, Jennifer!"

"It was only a penn'orth a week, sir," she pleaded, "And it did seem to sharpen me up a bit out in the cold. Well, while I was taking it I laughed to myself. 'That's the nearest to incense that I can think of,' I said. 'I will give that to the Lord.' And, bless you, sir, would you believe it? I got to turning round out of the wind to make believe I had it, and it did every bit so well.