Mona elevated her eyebrows.
"Wish I could stay to join you," said Captain Willoughby, "but I've promised my mother to take her to evening church. Au revoir!"
He departed. Mona got up from her seat and went to the piano. Then she twirled round on the music-stool and confronted Miss Webb.
"What new freak is this?" she asked, laughing.
Miss Webb looked at her gravely.
"We were wondering why Sundays should be such a trial," she said, "and Jill solved the problem. She said it was because they have no mother. I reminded them that they had you, and we finally bethought ourselves of hymn-singing down here."
Mona's laughing dimples faded away. She turned to the piano, her little sisters and brother clustered round her, and soon the sweet, childish voices were uplifted in song.
When bedtime came Bumps said ecstatically, "Thinging hymns in the drawn-room is nearly as nithe as thinging them in heaven!"
"When did you sing them there?" demanded Jack.
And Bumps replied promptly, "Before I wath a baby."