RANDOM REMINDER

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30452, 28 May 1964, Page 26

RANDOM REMINDER

COLLECTORS’ PIECE

This one brought a tear or two to our rheumy eyes. It came from a woman in Shirley, whose two little daughters went out after school to play, and came back happily with an old cigarette packet containing the vast sum of 3s 9d. The nine-year-old proudly announced they had been selling some give-away Children’s Book Week bookmarks given them by their brother: it is just the sort of gift girls might expect from an older brother. The look of horror on their mother’s face, as much as the lecture she read them on the fate of people who collected

money without authority, brought home to them the enormity of their offence. A list of the neighbours who had paid up was made, and after several gallons of tears had been spilled the six-year-old contributing a share beyond her years—the older girl was sent off to return the money with her older brother lending moral support by going to each gate with her. The little girl went with them too. It was a trying, task for the girls. But most of the people insisted on them keeping the money. One gave them each a pear, to eat between sobs. So they

returned, chastened, and the money they brought back went to a collection box for lepers. It was only the next day that the woman received a note from a pleasant infant teacher at the children s School. “Dear Mrs X" it said. “Mary was collecting for Crusoe, as she called it. Please let her keep the 3d and hand it in at school." It meant, of course, that the leper fund could not suffer, and reparations had to be found for the collection the girls had made for C.O.R.t .0. And it meant, too, that a few more tears were shed, Not, this time, by the daughters.