As a dreamer, the child was of that sort whose imaginings are never without some touch of the practical, and the material and the ideal often went curiously linked. One night, not long after her thirteenth birthday, just as she was dropping off to sleep, an idea flashed in her mind and it so worked upon her that she lay awake for hours. Perhaps it had been suggested to her by the description of the Tabernacle which her mother had been reading at evening prayers. Anyhow her notion was herself to build a temple, using as her materials, candles and a wooden box. She thought of the vistas of pillars this temple would have – beautiful white pillars, more beautiful than the alabaster ones in the City Chambers – rising out of a floor of wax which was to be scored and scored across while still soft to make it like a marble pavement. Tossing from side to side on her bed, she wondered whether the pillars should be left plain, or fluted by an excoriating finger nail. As the possibilities of her design grew upon her she became more and more wakeful, with a touch of fever. She would have, she determined, a tiny Ark of the Covenant made from a wax-coated match-box, and at either end, guarding it, she would put the two little stucco angels Aunt Perdy had brought her from Italy. She would gild them; and a vision floated before her of kneeling cherubim gleaming between aisles of flawless marble – all the work of her own hands!

Next morning was a Saturday, and Joanna, hardly able to bear her excitement, ran with her weekly sixpence down the hill to the grocer. Though he gave her the cheapest candles to be had, there were only twelve in the packet, and they looked disappointingly unlike marble. On the other hand they were longer than she had expected. And forgetting for the moment the considerable size of Aunt Perdy’s angels, Joanna thought she might reduce the scale of the Temple by making two pillars out of each candle.

When she got back to the house breathless, her mother opened the door to her and could not help noticing her bright countenance. Questioned, the child poured forth an incoherent tale about match-boxes, marble pillars and angels. Juley did not attempt to follow it. She only comprehended an unusual excitement, and she noticed with a pang that at such moments her daughter bore a strong likeness to poor Aunt Perdy.

“Would that I could see my dear child as much concerned about spiritual things!” she lamented with a grieved shake of her head.

When Joanna set to work upstairs with more doggedness now than enthusiasm, the result was a conflagration which left a large hole in the nursery carpet. Then and there the remaining candles were confiscated for household use. But Juley, always scrupulous in money matters, gave the Temple-builder as many pence as they had cost.

ΙII