Toady Lion began talking twenty to the dozen as soon as ever he came within Cissy's range.
"Oo!" he cried, "what 'oo fink? Father sented us each a great big half-crown from London—all to spend. And we have spended it."
"Well," said Cissy genially, "and what did you buy?"
"Us all wented down to Edam and boughted—oh! yots of fings."
"Show me what you've bought, Toady Lion! I want to see! How much money had you, did you say?"
Toady Lion sat plump down in the thickest dust of the road, as he always did just wherever he happened to be at the time. If there chanced to be a pool there or a flower-bed—why, so much the worse. But whenever Toady Lion wanted to sit down, he sat down. Here, however, there was only the dry dust of the road and a brown smatter of last year's leaves. The gallant knight was in a meditative mood and inclined to moralise.
"Money," said Toady Lion thoughtfully, "well, dere's the money that you get gived you, and wot Janet sez you muss put in your money-box. That's no good! Money-box locked! Janet keeps money-box. 'Get money when you are big,' she sez—rubbage, I fink—shan't want it then—lots and lots in trowsies' pocket then, gold sixpences and fings."
Toady Lion's eyes were dreamy and glorious, as if the angels were whispering to him, and he saw unspeakable things,
"Then there's miss'nary money in a round box wif a slit on the top. That's lots better! Sits on mantlepiece in dining-room. Can get it out wif slimmy-jimmy knife when nobody's looking. Hugh John showed me how. Prissy says boys who grab miss'nary's pennies won't not go to heaven, but Hugh John, he says—yes. 'Cause why miss'nary's money is for bad wicked people to make them good. Then if it is wicked to take miss'nary money, the money muss be meaned for us—to do good to me and Hugh John. Hugh John finks so. Me too!"
Toady Lion spoke in short sentences with pauses between, Cissy meantime nodding appreciation.