‘Oh, Emmeline!’ gasped Kitty, admiring, frightened, and astonished all at once. ‘But will they let you go?’ she added.
‘I shan’t ask them,’ said Emmeline. ‘It’s no business of theirs. They won’t even know I’m gone till tea-time, and by then Micky and I’ll be coming home together, I expect.’
‘Emmeline, you’re the cleverest, darlingest person in the world!’ cried Kitty, beginning an ecstatic dance round the room—a dance which stopped abruptly, however, as a sudden difficulty flashed into her mind. ‘How are you going to get money for a ticket?’ she asked.
Emmeline flushed a little.
‘There’s that eighteenpence Aunt Grace gave you just before she went away for the chickens’ food,’ she said a little awkwardly. ‘You know Cook said what they had would last for another week, so do you mind lending it me? We shall have our pocket-money in less than a week, you know, and we can use it all for paying back what we’ve borrowed from the chickens, for there won’t be Diamond Jubilee to think of now. I’m sure’s there’s no harm in just borrowing it for something so frightfully important as finding Micky.’
Kitty saw no harm at all in what Emmeline thought right.
‘I suppose there wouldn’t be money enough for me to go too?’ she suggested wistfully.
‘No, there wouldn’t,’ said Emmeline; ‘you must remember there’ll be Micky’s ticket back to get as well as mine. Besides, I expect I shall have to go into places that wouldn’t be at all fit for you. I’m sure Green Ginger Land must be a dreadful place.’