I must do up my pig for the night. There's only just time
before tea."

"Why don't you come in and tell it here if you want to?" said Nancy,
shoving herself off with her foot. "Look here. Ambrose, I've touched
the rafters twice. You couldn't."

It did not seem a very promising moment.

"If I do will you _really_ listen?" said Pennie, sitting down on a
packing-case midway between David and Nancy, "because it's an important
plan."

David nodded, and Nancy in her wild passage through the air, now high up
in the roof, now low down on the floor of the barn, screamed out "All
right! Go on." It was not of much consequence, but Pennie felt vexed
with her. She might at _least_ have stopped swinging. Turning her full
attention therefore on Ambrose and David, whom she hoped to impress, she
began:

"It's not exactly a pleasure plan, it's a sort of sacrificing plan, and
I want you to help me."

"I don't know a bit what you mean," said Nancy; "but if it isn't
pleasant, what's the good of it?"

"It _is_ pleasant," said Pennie hurriedly, for she saw a cold look of
disapproval on David's face; "not at first, but _afterwards_."

"I like a plan that's pleasant first, and afterwards, and all the time,"
said Nancy, who was now standing still on the swing.

It was worse for Nancy to listen in this mood than to pay no attention.

"I wish you'd go on swinging, Nancy," said Pennie impatiently, "you only
interrupt."

"Oh, all right!" said Nancy. "I thought you wanted us to listen. I
don't like the beginning at any rate."

She launched herself into motion again, but Pennie was uneasily
conscious that she could still hear every word, and though she explained
her plan as well as she could, she felt she was not doing it justice.
She got through it, however, without any further interruption.

"Wouldn't it be nice," she said after dwelling on Miss Unity's
attachment to the mandarin, "if we _all_ saved up some money and put it
into a box, and when we got enough if we _all_ bought a new mandarin,
and _all_ gave it her? I wanted to do it by myself, but I never could.
It would take too long."

She looked anxiously at her hearers. No one spoke at first. David
seemed entirely occupied in picking out the choicest bits of parsley and
carrot for Goliath, his biggest rabbit; but at last he said moodily:

"Ethelwyn broke it."

"Mean thing!" exclaimed Nancy's voice on high.

"Yes, I know," murmured Pennie.

"Then," continued