Page:Stories told to a child.djvu/223



HE charity of the rich is much to be commended, but how beautiful is the charity of the poor! Call to mind the coldest day you ever experienced. Think of the bitter wind and driving snow; think how you shook and shivered—how the sharp white particles were driven up against your face—how, within doors, the carpets were lifted like billows along the floors, the wind howled and moaned in the chimneys, windows creaked, doors rattled, and every now and then heavy lumps of snow came thundering down with a dull weight from the roof.

Now hear my story.

In one of the broad, open plains of Lincolnshire, there is a long, reedy sheet of water, a favorite resort of wild ducks. At its northern extremity stand two mud cottages, old and out of repair.

One bitter, bitter night, when the snow lay three feet deep on the ground, and a cutting east wind was driving it about, and whistling in the dry frozen reeds by the water's edge, and swinging the bare willow trees till their branches swept the ice, an old woman sat spinning in one of these cottages before a moderately 10