An old woman who makes her living picking up sticks in the Park is given a sixpence, to her a great matter. She must decide how to spend it; and just when the bright globe outside the pub is beckoning, she hears the wailing of a child.
Biographical and other notes
Margaret Oliphant, who lived in Windsor for over thirty years, probably took many walks in the Park at Windsor Castle; and given her charitable habits she would have been familiar with poor old women like the one in this story.
The Windsor Comet and Bazaar News "appears to be a single-issue newspaper, printed at Eton largely as a joke" (per the Margaret Oliphant Fiction Bibliography, page 61).
British publishing information
Periodical: Windsor Comet and Bazaar News 6 Nov 1888