"You're making a joke of it," said Jill, flushing a deep red. "I mean a real starving person, when I talk of the poor. Would you rather give it to the collection in church, Mr. Stone?"
"Aye p'raps that would be the best way to work it."
So taking that as a promise Jill set to work with a will, and before she left that evening she had marked off fifteen cabbages, the tenth of the old man's property.
"And now if you really like to give them, will you come to-morrow to 'Bethel' and do your vow?"
Mr. Stone wavered, but finally Jill won him over, and he promised to be outside the fir plantation the very next day.
Jack and Bumps were full of interest when Jill told them of her evening's work. It did much towards solacing Bumps, who had a bruised head and a badly grazed knee, but wounds were generally her lot after an hour or two alone with Jack.
"I wath the old man of the thea," she explained to Jill, "and I couldn't thtick on. Jack jumped and rolled and kicked me up in the air to get me off, and I had to try to be on all the time. It wath very differcult!"
She was rather doubtful about the cabbages.
"I thought it wath to be money. God really does make money and give it to us, but does He make cabbages? I thought they growed of theirselves."