The girl who had most property confiscated was allotted the task of taking the money to church and placing it in the bag during collection, to make the impression of her forgetfulness deeper, so to speak. This rule had been made to check carelessness and slovenly habits and continual complaints of lost property—though the idea of allotting the task of placing the money in the bag to the chief offender had long ago originated with the prefects themselves.
Sometimes several weeks would pass without a single fine, but this particular week there seemed to have been a perfect epidemic of forgetfulness, and Madge had collected one and twopence in penny fines and handed the money over to Monica on Sunday morning. Monica had dutifully carried the money to church and, on receiving the bag from the girl next to her, had held it in her left hand while she proceeded very deliberately to drop fourteen pennies into it, one at a time. She was among the last to receive the collection bag, and the hymn being a short one, the organist was very softly extemporizing till the collection was finished. Thus the sound of each penny falling with a musical chink into the bag was heard all over the church. There were rustlings and scrapings, as all heads were turned and all eyes focussed on that one particular corner of the congregation, while the girls around had difficulty in restraining their titters as Monica solemnly continued dropping her pennies till the last was safely in. The sidesman at the other end of the row gazed in a kind of mesmerized trance from which he did not arouse himself till Prue, very red in the face, handed the weighty bag back to him.
Until the last girl had filed out of the porch, the school continued to be the centre of attraction to the congregation, who stared at them with far more attention, I am sorry to say, than was given to the retiring choir and clergy. Monica had succeeded in making St. Etheldreda's very conspicuous that day.
Nat, who had been sitting in another row, hastened to place herself at Monica's side when they formed up outside the church for the return journey.
"What you want is a keeper," she said darkly. "I shall never dare trust you away from my side after this. If I had been next to you, you wouldn't have held the bag long enough to drop many pennies in, I can assure you. Prinny will be wild. You'll have to face the music."
Monica made no reply, merely humming aggravatingly a line from Chu Chin Chow, which sounded something like this:
"Chinking, clinking, clinking, chinking,
clinking on the ground.
Forty thousand pieces——"
"You'll be crying, not singing, by the time Prinny has rolled you in the dust and sat on you," Nat warned her.
"Well, I might have done worse," replied Monica blithely. "I might have made it halfpennies instead of pennies."
After tea the next day Monica was duly sent for by the Principal, and returned a little later to her study. Much to Nat's relief there were no traces of tears.