"You see we haven't begun very long, so there's only a little to start
with; but we shall always be putting in, because we often get presents,
and I've spoken to Mr. Stone, and we've counted that his fifteen cabbages
will bring him one shilling and tenpence halfpenny, and he says that had
better be given to you too."
It seemed incoherent, but Mrs. Errington gently drew the explanation
out of the child, and though Jill did not divulge the spot of their
"Bethel," her account interested the rector and his wife greatly.
"It will be money well spent," Mr. Errington said, "for it will be the
means of telling those poor folk of the love of the Saviour."
"And you will have the honour, Jill dear, of starting the collection,"
said Mrs. Errington.
"It's a pity," said Jill with knitted brows, "that you can't get every
one to give you their tenth."
"I don't think there are many people who do give their tenth," said
the rector.
"Miss Falkner gives all hers to the Church Missionary Society," Jill
went on; "but Jack and Bumps and me thought we'd like to see where our
money went."
"Wise little woman!"
Mr. Errington emptied the bag, and delighted Jill by giving her a formal
receipt for it, and entering the sum in an account book. She ran away
quite happy, waving her scarlet bag in the air, and wishing with all
her heart that birthdays and Christmas, and all such occasions for
receiving presents, would come every day.
"Mona is going to have a party," announced Jack one day soon after
this. "I went into the drawing-room to give Miss Webb her pencil that
I picked up, and she and Mona were talking about it. It is to be next
Wednesday."
The children were just beginning their afternoon lessons; and Jill was
washing her slate preparatory to doing a sum.
"How jolly!" she cried. "I hope she'll let us come to it. When is it to
be? Is it a dinner party?"
"No, a garden party. It's going to be a very grand one. There's a band
coming, and a tent for fruit and ices, and there will be tennis and
croquet, and bowls and----"
"Now, Jack," said Miss Falkner quietly, "that is enough. Lessons now,
and talk after."
It was hard to obey, but Jack put a restraint upon himself, and when
lessons were over Jill determined to get no more news second-hand.
"Come on, Bumps. I'm going to ask Mona about it."
The little girls found their sister in her bedroom, getting ready for
a drive.
"We've come to ask about the party," said Jill, who always went straight
to the point. "We can come into it, can't we?"
Mona laughed, then she sat down in an easy-chair and took Bumps upon
her lap.
"I hardly ever see you now," she said; "Miss Falkner keeps you all in
such order. Why, Bumps, you are growing quite heavy."
"Yeth," assented Bumps, "I thmashed Polly's head by stepping on it. She's
my thecond betht wax-doll, Mona!"
"You'll let us come to the party?" asked Jill persuasively.
"Yes, if you behave nicely. There may be two other children coming. Little
Indian nieces of Mrs. Moxon's."
"Heathens?" questioned Jill.
Mona laughed merrily.
"Good gracious, no! What a ridiculous child you are."
Jill coloured up at once.
"I like boys better than girls," she said in her stubborn tone. "I know
I shan't like them."
"You must be civil and kind to them, or else I shall send you back to
the school-room. But perhaps that will be no punishment. I think you
must have altered your mind about governesses, Jill."
"Yes," said Jill in a different tone. "But Miss Falkner is not like a
governess. She's very fond of us, she says so!"
"Extraordinary! You don't say so!"
Mona laughed again, then put Bumps off her lap.
"Now run away, small people, and remember if you appear in the garden
on Wednesday, you must be in the cleanest frocks and the sweetest
tempers. Otherwise you must make yourselves scarce."
"Like the children walking to the Golden City," said Bumps trotting
after Jill.
Jill looked down at her with troubled eyes.
"Sometimes I wonder where I am," she said, moved by the impulse of the
moment to confide in her little sister. "I don't believe I get on very
fast. I'm always losing my temper, and that means dirtying my frock."
"And then you have to wash it," said Bumps cheerfully.
"Yes," said Jill, with a light in her eyes; "I can do that, at least I
can ask to have it done, but--" and here she relapsed into gloom again.
"I sometimes wonder if it is ever clean for more than a minute!"
Wednesday came, and the three children sadly tried Miss Falkner's patience
at lessons.
She closed books at last, and sent them out into the garden to play before
their early dinner. They longed to go into Mona's portion of the grounds,
but the head gardener kept them back. Tents were being erected; servants
bustled about, and Mona herself, with Miss Webb and one or two gentlemen,
seemed to be superintending everything herself.
At four o'clock Jill and Bumps, arrayed in their best white frocks, were
down on the front lawn awaiting the arrival of guests. Miss Falkner in
a pretty grey dress and hat stood talking to Miss Webb under the trees,
and Mona, looking radiant in her youth and loveliness, dressed like
her little sisters in pure white, with a spray of delicate pink roses in
her breast, was talking and laughing with a few of her house guests. Jack
presently came up to his sister. He was dressed in his white sailor-suit,
and looked stiff and uncomfortable.
"Oh, Jill, I say, do let's get out of this. It's so dull and proper. You
and Bumps look like the china figures on the school-room mantelpiece."
"Yes," said Jill; "it is very dull. Where shall we go?"
"Let us see how Bethel is getting on."
So the three made their way to the fir plantation, but met with several
interruptions on the way. Jack chased a fowl which had escaped from the
poultry-yard. Bumps would insist on stopping to watch the peregrinations
of two frogs in some long grass, and Jill had a talk with Sam, who was
cutting down a young tree. As they trod softly on the brown pine-needles
underfoot Jack startled his sisters by a shrill whisper.
"Look! there's a trespasser."
Jill pressed eagerly forward. A tall broad-shouldered man in clerical
clothes was standing reading the board. Then instead of turning away,
he went up to the pile of stones, and bending down was in the act of
lifting one of them out of its place to look at it, when Jill's indignant
voice arrested him.
"You're a trespasser! We shall prosecute you!"
He turned round in astonishment, and his stern, rugged features were
transformed by a smile, when he saw the daintily-dressed children
before him.
"Is this your property?" he asked.
Jill was like a little bantam-cock.
"Every bit of it is ours, of course it is. You must have seen the board;
we ain't going to allow any trespassers here."
"You'll have to be prothecuted!" cried Bumps breathlessly.
"Yes, Jill said she'd prosecute," said Jack, looking first at the stranger
and then at his sister, as if measuring in his mind's eye their respective
sizes.
"What is to be done with me?" asked the stranger with an amused look.
Jack and Jill put their heads together, and consulted in hurried whispers
as to the best course to take.
Then Jill spoke very emphatically.
"We shall have to prosecute you, because you didn't care for our
board. You saw it and you were going to move our stones. Jack and I
think if you will walk between us and promise not to escape, we will
go down to the policeman at our gate. Mona is having a grand party and
he's here now, for we saw him. He'll tell us what to do."
"I think," said the trespasser, trying to look grave, "that you might
fine me. Magistrates do that to some trespassers."
Jill did not understand this, but she was too proud to confess it.
"No, you must come to the policeman," she said. So presently skirting
the tennis lawn the little procession passed. Jack and Jill marched on
either side of him, Bumps walked behind.
"I can catch hold of his coat if he runs away," she said.
It was unfortunate for the children's plan that Mona should intercept them.
She moved from a shady tree on the lawn, and accompanied by two gentlemen
confronted them.
A slight flush rose to her cheek when she saw the prisoner, and her
voice faltered slightly.
"Mr. Arnold? I have not seen you for so many years that I hardly
recognised you at first. You must be staying with Lady Crane; though
she mentioned your name to me I never connected it with _you_. I am very
glad to see you."
Her tone was more nervous than cordial. She introduced the other
gentlemen with her to him. "Sir Henry Talbot. Captain Willoughby."
Then she added lightly--
"I might have known I would find you in the children's company. I remember
how fond you were of all small people."
"He's our prisoner," said Jack importantly, "and we're taking him to
the policeman."
"A trethpather," put in Bumps excitedly.
"Yes, we're going to prosecute him," said Jill gravely.
Mona laughed, but Mr. Arnold looked grave enough as he said:
"Yes, I plead guilty, but I appeal to the present company that I should
be let off a term of imprisonment by paying a fine."
"What does he mean?" asked Jill confidentially, addressing Captain
Willoughby, who was always the children's friend.
"He means he'll pay down some money if you make him. What has he been
doing?"
"He has been trespassing in our most private place. There's a board up,
so there was no excuse."
"I think if he pays us some money we'll let him off," said Jack.
Mr. Arnold held out five shillings.
"It's a first offence," he said. "I'll never do it again."
"What shall we do with it?" asked Jill, taking the money and fingering
it dubiously.
Mona had walked on with Sir Henry Talbot.
"Why," said Jack "we'll put it in our bag."
Jill's whole face brightened.
"Thank you," she said. "We'll forgive you then."
"You mercenary little wretches," said Captain Willoughby. "Is this a
new game by which you fleece every stranger?"
"The money isn't for us!" said Jill indignantly. "It's for a kind
of church."
Mr. Arnold looked at her, and gave one of his rare smiles again.
"I must hear about it," he said. "I should like to know where my fine
will go."
He certainly knew how to gain children's confidences. Before very long
on a garden seat Jill was telling him about it all, even about their
cherished "Bethel."
She was rapidly making the trespasser into a friend.
"I am most interested," he said; "I am going back to a big manufacturing
town soon, and I think I must try and get some of my boys and girls to
put aside a tenth."
"Have you any little boys and girls of your own?" asked Jill.
"I am not a father," Mr. Arnold replied, "but I have all sorts and kinds
of boys and girls who I consider belong to me. Little crossing-sweepers,
and errand-boys, and miners, and school-boys, and factory-girls. And I
have a few like you who enjoy plenty from their Heavenly Father."
"Did you know Mona long ago?" asked Jill.
"I knew her," said Mr. Arnold slowly, as his gaze travelled to a
white-gowned figure in the distance, "when she was about as big as you,
and we used to spend all our holidays together till we grew up. You
ask your sister to tell you of our prank in the church tower with old
Solomon Disher!"
"Oh, do tell me."
He shook his head. He saw Mona coming towards them again and he rose to
meet her.
A few words that then passed between them puzzled Jill.
"Well, Mr. Arnold, tell me your news. I suppose you have never changed
your opinion since we last met."
"No, I never have."
His eyes and mouth were stern as he spoke.
Mona looked at him thoughtfully, then as she met his gaze, she laughed
lightly.
"Your spirit is still ruling your body. I can see that. And I suppose
you would say that my body is still ruling my spirit. I think it is. I
always told you I should take the easy path."
Mr. Arnold glanced at her, then he looked at the gay company on the
flowered lawns, his ear caught the lively strains of the band, and his
gaze wandered to the beautiful sloping hills and woods that formed a
background to the charming old English house that was her property.
"A noble patrimony," he said in a low clear voice. "I would it did not
belong to those who lay up treasure for themselves and are not rich
toward God."
A crimson flush mounted to Mona's fair cheeks.
"Seven years ago," she said "we parted because of your unreasonable
severity. Have we met to do the same this afternoon?"
A smile came to his lips.
"I hope not. I have lived and learnt to judge less harshly; but my aim
is still the same. I hope my standard has not been lowered."
Mona shrugged her shoulders, then deliberately walked away from him.
Jill looked after her astonished.
"You have made Mona cross, Mr. Arnold."
"I am afraid I have," he said humbly. "Shall we come over to the tea tent?"
Jill was only too delighted.