"Oo!" he cried, "what 'oo fink? Father sented us each a great big half-crown from London--all to spend. And we have spended it."

"Well," said Cissy genially, "and what did you buy?"

"Us all wented down to Edam and boughted--oh! yots of fings."

"Show me what you've bought, Toady Lion! I want to see! How much money had you, did you say?"

Toady Lion sat plump down in the thickest dust of the road, as he always did just wherever he happened to be at the time. If there chanced to be a pool there or a flower-bed--why, so much the worse.

But whenever Toady Lion wanted to sit down, he sat down. Here, however, there was only the dry dust of the road and a brown smatter of last year's leaves. The gallant knight was in a meditative mood and inclined to moralise.

"Money," said Toady Lion thoughtfully, "well, dere's the money that you get gived you, and wot Janet sez you muss put in your money-box.

That's no good! Money-box locked! Janet keeps money-box. 'Get money when you are big,' she sez--rubbage, I fink--shan't want it then--lots and lots in trowsies' pocket then, gold sixpences and fings."

Toady Lion's eyes were dreamy and glorious, as if the angels were whispering to him, and he saw unspeakable things,

"Then there's miss'nary money in a round box wif a slit on the top.

That's lots better! Sits on mantlepiece in dining-room. Can get it out wif slimmy-jimmy knife when n.o.body's looking. Hugh John showed me how.

Prissy says boys who grab miss'nary's pennies won't not go to heaven, but Hugh John, he says--yes. 'Cause why miss'nary's money is for bad wicked people to make them good. Then if it is wicked to take miss'nary money, the money muss be meaned for us--to do good to me and Hugh John. Hugh John finks so. Me too!"

Toady Lion spoke in short sentences with pauses between, Cissy meantime nodding appreciation.

"Yes, I know," she said meditatively, "a thinbladed kitchen knife is best."

But Sir Toady Lion had started out on the track of Right and Wrong, and was intent on running them down with his usual slow persistence.

"And then the miss'nary money is weally-weally our money, 'cause Janet _makes_ us put it in. Onst Hugh John tried metal b.u.t.tons off of his old serge trowsies. But Janet she found out. And he got smacked. An'

nen, us only takes a penny out when us is _tony-bloke_!"

"Is which? Oh, stone-broke," laughed Cissy Carter, sitting down beside Toady Lion; "who taught you to say that word?"

"Hugh John," said the small boy wistfully; "him and me tony-bloke all-ee-time, all-ee-ways, all-ee-while!"

"Does Prissy have any of--the missionary money?" said Cissy; "I should!"

"No," said Toady Lion sadly; "don't you know? Our Prissy's awful good, juss howwid! She likes goin' to church, an' washing, an' having to wear gloves. Girls is awful funny."

"They are," said Cissy Carter promptly. The funniness of her s.e.x had often troubled her. "But tell me, Toady Lion," she went on, "does Hugh John like going to church, and being washed, and things?"

"Who? Hugh John--him?" said Toady Lion, with slow contempt. "'Course he don't. Why, he's a boy. And once he told Mr. Burnham so--he did."

Mr. Burnham was the clergyman of both families. He had recently come to the place, was a well-set up bachelor, and represented a communion which was not by any means the dominant one in Bordershire.

"Yes, indeedy. It was under the elm. Us was having tea. An' Mist'r Burnham, he was having tea. And father and Prissy. And, oh! such a lot of peoples. And he sez, Mist'r Burnham sez to Hugh John, 'You are good little boy. I saw you in church on Sunday. Do you like to go to church?' He spoke like this-a-way, juss like I'm tellin' oo, down here under his silk waistcoat--kind of growly, but nice."

"Hugh John say that he liked to go to church--'cos father was there listenin', you see. Then Mist'r Burnham ask Hugh John WHY he like to go to church, and of course, he say wight out that it was to look at Sergeant Steel's wed coat. An' nen everybody laugh--I don't know why.

But Mist'r Burnham he laughed most."

Cissy also failed to understand why everybody should have laughed.

Toady Lion took up the burden of his tale.

"Yes, indeedy, and one Sunday _I_ didn't have to go to church--'cos I'd yet up such a yot of gween gooseb----"

"All right, Toady Lion, I know!" interrupted Cissy quickly.

"Of gween gooseberries," persisted Toady Lion calmly; "so I had got my tummy on in front. It hurted like--well, like when you get sand down 'oo trowsies. Did 'oo ever get sand in 'oo trowsies, Cissy?"

"Hush--of course not!" said Cissy Carter; "girls don't have trowsers--they have----"

But any injudicious revelations on Cissy's part were stopped by Toady Lion, who said, "No, should juss fink not. Girls is too great softs to have trowsies.

"Onst though on the sands at a seaside, when I was '_kye-kying_' out loud an' kickin' fings, 'cos I was not naughty but only fractious, dere was a lady wat said 'Be dood, little boy, why can't you be dood?'

"An' nen I says, 'How can I be dood? Could 'oo be dood wif all that sand in 'oo trowsies?'

"An' nen--the lady she wented away quick, so quick--I can't tell why.

P'raps _she_ had sand in her trowsies! Does 'oo fink so, Cissy?"

"That'll do--I quite understand," said Cissy Carter, somewhat hastily, in dread of Toady Lion's well-known license of speech.

"An' nen 'nother day after we comed home I went into the park and clum up a nice tree. An' it was ever so gween and scratchy. 'An it was nice. Nen father he came walking his horse slow up the road, n' I hid.

But father he seen me. And he say, 'What you doing there, little boy?

You break you neck. Nen I whip you. Come down, you waskal!' He said it big--down here, (Toady Lion ill.u.s.trated with his hand the place from which he supposed his father's voice to proceed). An' it made me feel all queer an' trimbly, like our guinea pig's nose when father speak like that. An' I says to him, 'Course, father, you never clumb up no trees on Sundays when _you_ was little boy!' An' nen he didn't speak no more down here that trimbly way, but laughed, and pulled me down, and roded me home in front of him, and gived me big hunk of pie--yes, indeedy!"

Toady Lion felt that now he had talked quite enough, and began to arrange his bra.s.s cannons on the dust, in a plan of attack which beleaguered Cissy Carter's foot and turned her flank to the left.

"Where did you get all those nice new cannons? You haven't told me yet," she said.

"Boughted them!" answered Toady Lion promptly, "least I boughted some, and Hugh John boughted some, an' Prissy she boughted some."

"And how do you come to have them all?" asked Cissy, watching the imposing array. As usual it was the Battle of Bannockburn and the English were getting it hot.

"Well," said Toady Lion thoughtfully, "'twas this way. 'Oo sees Prissy had half-a-crown, an' she boughted a silly book all about a 'Lamplighter' for herself--an' two bra.s.s cannons--one for Hugh John an' one for me. And Hugh John he had half-a-crown, an' he boughted three bra.s.s cannon, two for himself and one for me."

"And what did you buy with your half-crown?" said Cissy, bending her brows sweetly upon the small gunner.

"Wif my half-a-crown? Oh, I just boughted three bra.s.s cannons--_dey was all for mine-self_!"

"Toady Lion," cried Cissy indignantly, "you are a selfish little pig!

I shan't stop with you any more."

"Little pigs is nice," said Toady Lion, unmoved, arranging his cannon all over again on a new plan after the removal of Cissy's foot; "their noses----"

"Don't speak to me about their noses, you selfish little boy! Blow your own nose."

"No use," said Toady Lion philosophically; "won't stay blowed. 'Tis too duicy!"

Cissy set off in disgust towards the house of Windy Standard, leaving Toady Lion calmly playing with his six cannon all alone in the white dust of the king's highway.