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 nobody'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 buttons 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 sex 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.