"Poor boy!" said the kindly little voice. "And how do you get your living?"
"Oh, I sells matches or carries gents' portmantles when they'll let me, or anything honest as turns up."
"Well don't think papa is unkind because he spoke cross to you, but he had been annoyed. And here is a shilling he gave me to-day; you need it more than I do, so I will give it to you. Are you here every day?"
"Ay, I's mostly here every day,*' said Benny, closing his fingers around the bright shilling as one in a dream. The next moment he was alone. He looked everywhere for the little girl, but she was nowhere visible.
"Golly!" said Benny, rubbing his eyes, "I wonder now if she wur a hangel. Nelly said as 'ow the Lord 'ud provide. An' mebbe He sent her with that bob. I wish I had looked more particler to see if she had wings, 'cause Nelly said as how hangels had wings."
More than twenty times that afternoon Benny looked at the bright new shilling that had been given him; the very sight of it seemed to do him good. It seemed to turn the tide, too, in his favour, for before dark he had earned another shilling; and that evening he trudged to his home with a lighter heart than he had known for many a week.
The weather on Christmas Eve was anything but orthodox. There was neither frost nor snow; but on the contrary, it was close and sultry, Benny had been out in the neighbourhood of Edge Hill with a big bundle for a woman, who dismissed him with three halfpence, and the remark that
