"Be merciful," pleaded Captain Willoughby. "If I had known this visit of ours would have entailed such a loss to my pocket, I would have kept a long way off from it!"
Jill looked perplexed.
"I don't want to get money out of people," she said, "but you really are trespassers, and it will be lovely for our bag!"
Mona took her purse out of her pocket, and put half a sovereign into her little sister's hand.
"There!" she said. "Run away and put that into your bag. It is for a good object. Now, Captain Willoughby, we must go back to the house. I promised to drive with Miss Webb at four o'clock, and it is that already."
Jill turned over the gold coin in amazement and delight. She thanked her sister effusively.
"I knew our bag would get on, I was sure it would," she said; and then she scampered back to the school-room, where Miss Falkner was teaching Jack how to arrange his stamps geographically in his stamp album, and Bumps was looking admiringly on.
"Look!" she cried. "Mona has given this to me for our bag! Isn't it perfectly lovely."
She got plenty of sympathy from the school-room party. Miss Falkner had heard at last about "Bethel," but she had respected Jill's wish about it, and had never been there.