Chapter Fourteen.The Introduction.Meanwhile Nesta was in a state of wild excitement. No sooner had Marcia and Angela gone down the street than she darted into the drawing room.“Well,” she said, “is it all right? Did you really see her? Was she properly introduced to you? Can you say in future that you know her? When you meet her, will you be able to bow to her? Have you contrived to get her promise to come and see you? Tell me everything, everything.”“What affair is it of yours, child?” said Clara crossly. For although she had met Miss St. Just, it seemed to her that she had made but small way with that young lady.“It means everything to me—everything possible. Do you know her?”“Of course, I know her! Is it likely that your sister would be so rude, so fearfully rude as not to introduce me when I was in the room?”“I don’t know,” replied Nesta. “Marcia can be rude enough when she likes.”“Well, anyhow, she wasn’t. She did introduce us, and Miss St. Just was most pleasant. She has far nicer manners than your sister.”“That wouldn’t be difficult,” said Nesta. “Marcia is so very stand-offish.”“Ridiculously proud and prudish, I call her,” said Clay.“And do you think Miss St. Just as lovely as you always did?”“Oh, far, far more lovely. She puts every one else into the shade. I invited her to Court Prospect, and I expect she’ll come. I am going home now, and shall try to get up a grand party in her honour. After what she said to me she could hardly refuse. It is all delightful.”“Yes, delightful!” said Nesta. “Well, good-bye. Just mention to Penelope, will you, that you were introduced to her this morning.”“I wonder why I should do that?” said Clara, as she settled herself in the little pony trap which was standing outside the door.“Oh, just to oblige me,” said Nesta, and the next minute Clara Carter was out of sight.Nesta skipped joyfully into the house.“Now I’ve done it,” she thought. “Penelope can’t go back. We made a bet. How I was to fulfil my part I hadn’t the least idea, but I am thankful to say I have won. She’ll have to give me a whole sovereign. Yes, a whole, beautiful yellow-boy for my very own self; and if Clara contrives to get Miss St. Just to visit them at Court Prospect, Penelope is to give me two sovereigns. I shall be in luck! Why, a girl with two sovereigns can face the world. She has all before her. She has nothing left to wish for. It is splendid! Magnificent! Oh, I am in luck!”Nesta danced into the garden. Notwithstanding the hot day she was determined to go at once to tell Flossie Griffiths the good news. Flossie had not been quite as nice as usual to Nesta of late. She had made the acquaintance of the Carters, and the Carters had not specially taken to her. Penelope Carter was also in some ways more fascinating to Nesta than her old friend Flossie, and in consequence Flossie was furiously jealous. But when you have a piece of good news to tell—something quite above the ordinary, you must confide it to some one, and if it is a jealous friend, who would long to have such a delightful thing happen to herself, why so much the better.So Nesta pinned on her shabbiest hat and went down the narrow pathway, found the entrance to the woods, and by-and-by reached the Griffiths’ house.Flossie was in the garden; she was playing with her dogs. She had three, and was devoted to them. One was a black Pomeranian, another a pug, and the third a mongrel—something between an Irish setter and an Irish terrier. The mongrel was the most interesting dog of the three, and had been taught tricks by Flossie. His name was Jingo. He was now standing on his hind legs, while the other two dogs waltzed round and round. However strong his desire to pounce upon Ginger, the pug, and Blackberry, the Pomeranian, he had to restrain himself. They might yap and bite at his toes, and try to reach his ears, as much as they pleased, but he must remain like a statue. If he endured long enough he would have a lump of sugar for his pains, which he would eat deliberately in view of his tormentors; for this halcyon moment he endured the tortures which Flossie daily subjected him to. It was really time for his sugar now, he had been on his hind legs for quite two minutes; his back was aching; he hated the feel of the sun on his head, he wanted to get into the shade, and above all things he wanted to punish Blackberry and to snap at Ginger. Flossie’s hand was in her pocket, the delicious moment had all but arrived, when Nesta’s clear, ringing voice sounded on the breeze.“I say, Floss, I’m just in time. Oh, do come away from those stupid dogs. I have something so heavenly to tell you—it’s perfectly golloptious.”Flossie forgot all about her dogs. Jingo mournfully descended to all fours, bit Ginger, snapped at Blackberry, and retired sulking into a corner.Meanwhile Flossie took the arm of her friend and led her into the shade.“How red you look,” she said. “You must have been running very fast.”“What does that matter? I have got it; I have won it.”“You don’t mean to say you’ve won your bet?”“Yes, I have though. This very morning she came over—Clay, you know, and soon afterwards the Fairy Princess, and my noble elder sister was present, and she had to introduce Clay to the Princess, and it’s extremely likely that the Princess will be forced by circumstances to pay the Carters a visit at Court Prospect.”“I wish her joy of them,” said Flossie sulkily.“Oh, you needn’t sulk, old Floss. I’ve got my yellow-boy all for myself. Now then, I’ll tell you what. I know you’re ever so cross, and as jealous as ever you can be, but I’m going to share some of it with you.”“You aren’t! Not really? Then if you are, I will say you’re a brick!”Flossie’s brow cleared, her shallow black eyes danced. She looked full at Nesta.“You and I’ll have a picnic all to ourselves,” said Nesta.“Then you must be very quick,” replied Flossie, “for we are going to the seaside next week.”“And the Carters are going on Saturday. I do declare I’ll have to look sharp after my yellow-boy. I tell you what—there’s nothing on earth for us to do to-day; why shouldn’t we go right away and see the Carters. I could get my money from Pen, and we’ll have a treat. We can go to Simpson’s and have ginger beer and chocolates. Wouldn’t that be prime?”“Rather!” said Flossie, “and I’m just in the humour, for the day is frightfully hot.”“But you don’t mind the heat—I’m sure I don’t.”“You’re rather a show in that dress, Nesta.”“I don’t care twopence about my dress,” said Nesta. “What I want is my darling yellow-boy. I want him and I’ll have him. We can go right away through the woods as far as our place; only perhaps that would be dangerous, for they might pounce upon me. They’re always doing it now. Before mothery got so ill we had our stated times, but now we’re never sure when we’ll be wanted. It’s Molly this, and Ethel that, and Nesta, Nesta, Nesta, all the time. I scarcely have a minute to myself. If it wasn’t for my lessons I’d simply be deaved out of all patience; but it’s hard now that there are holidays, that I can’t get away.”“I wish you could come to the seaside with us,” said Flossie suddenly, as she thought of the yellow-boy—twenty whole shillings. Perhaps her father and mother might be induced to take Nesta with them. Her father had said only that morning:“I am sorry for you, my little girl; you will miss your companions.”Flossie’s father was rather proud of her friendship for Nesta Aldworth. He thought a great deal of Mr Aldworth, and spoke of him as a rising man. Oh, yes, it might be worth while to get her father and mother to invite Nesta to join them, and Nesta would have her twenty shillings. Twenty, or nineteen at least, and they might have a great many sprees at Scarborough. It would be delightful.“I tell you what it is,” said Flossie. “There’s no earthly reason why you should stay at home. I’ll just run in this very minute and speak to mother. Why shouldn’t you come with us for a week or fortnight?”“Do you think there’s any chance?” said Nesta, turning pale.“There’s every possible chance. Why in the world shouldn’t you come with us? They can’t want four of you at home, and it’s downright selfish.”“The fact is,” said Nesta, “they’re all agog to get Marcia a holiday.”“Your elder sister—Miss Aldworth? The old maid?”“Yes, indeed, she is that, but they all think she is looking pale, and they want her to go to those blessed St. Justs. She’s hand in glove with them, you know. She thinks of no one else on earth but that Angela of hers.”“Well, I’m not surprised at that,” said Flossie. “Every one thinks a lot of Angela St. Just. Now, don’t keep me, I’ll rush in and speak to mother.”She dashed into the house. The aggrieved mongrel raised a languid head and looked at her. How false she was, with that sugar in her pocket. He wagged a deprecating tail, but Flossie took no notice.She found her mother busily engaged dusting the drawing room.“What is it?” she said. “Are you inclined to come in and help me? This room is in a disgraceful state. I must really change Martha.”“Oh, mother, I’ll help you another day, but I’m in such a hurry now. Nesta is outside.”“I wonder what you’ll do without Nesta at the seaside,” said the mother.“Oh, mother, do you think you could coax father very hard to let me invite Nesta to come with us just for a week—or even for a fortnight? I wish—I wish you would! Do you think it could be managed?”Mrs Griffiths paused in her work to consider. She was a very frowzy, commonplace woman. She looked out of the window. There stood Nesta, pretty, careless, débonnaire—untidy enough in all truth, but decidedly above the Griffiths in her personal appearance.
Meanwhile Nesta was in a state of wild excitement. No sooner had Marcia and Angela gone down the street than she darted into the drawing room.
“Well,” she said, “is it all right? Did you really see her? Was she properly introduced to you? Can you say in future that you know her? When you meet her, will you be able to bow to her? Have you contrived to get her promise to come and see you? Tell me everything, everything.”
“What affair is it of yours, child?” said Clara crossly. For although she had met Miss St. Just, it seemed to her that she had made but small way with that young lady.
“It means everything to me—everything possible. Do you know her?”
“Of course, I know her! Is it likely that your sister would be so rude, so fearfully rude as not to introduce me when I was in the room?”
“I don’t know,” replied Nesta. “Marcia can be rude enough when she likes.”
“Well, anyhow, she wasn’t. She did introduce us, and Miss St. Just was most pleasant. She has far nicer manners than your sister.”
“That wouldn’t be difficult,” said Nesta. “Marcia is so very stand-offish.”
“Ridiculously proud and prudish, I call her,” said Clay.
“And do you think Miss St. Just as lovely as you always did?”
“Oh, far, far more lovely. She puts every one else into the shade. I invited her to Court Prospect, and I expect she’ll come. I am going home now, and shall try to get up a grand party in her honour. After what she said to me she could hardly refuse. It is all delightful.”
“Yes, delightful!” said Nesta. “Well, good-bye. Just mention to Penelope, will you, that you were introduced to her this morning.”
“I wonder why I should do that?” said Clara, as she settled herself in the little pony trap which was standing outside the door.
“Oh, just to oblige me,” said Nesta, and the next minute Clara Carter was out of sight.
Nesta skipped joyfully into the house.
“Now I’ve done it,” she thought. “Penelope can’t go back. We made a bet. How I was to fulfil my part I hadn’t the least idea, but I am thankful to say I have won. She’ll have to give me a whole sovereign. Yes, a whole, beautiful yellow-boy for my very own self; and if Clara contrives to get Miss St. Just to visit them at Court Prospect, Penelope is to give me two sovereigns. I shall be in luck! Why, a girl with two sovereigns can face the world. She has all before her. She has nothing left to wish for. It is splendid! Magnificent! Oh, I am in luck!”
Nesta danced into the garden. Notwithstanding the hot day she was determined to go at once to tell Flossie Griffiths the good news. Flossie had not been quite as nice as usual to Nesta of late. She had made the acquaintance of the Carters, and the Carters had not specially taken to her. Penelope Carter was also in some ways more fascinating to Nesta than her old friend Flossie, and in consequence Flossie was furiously jealous. But when you have a piece of good news to tell—something quite above the ordinary, you must confide it to some one, and if it is a jealous friend, who would long to have such a delightful thing happen to herself, why so much the better.
So Nesta pinned on her shabbiest hat and went down the narrow pathway, found the entrance to the woods, and by-and-by reached the Griffiths’ house.
Flossie was in the garden; she was playing with her dogs. She had three, and was devoted to them. One was a black Pomeranian, another a pug, and the third a mongrel—something between an Irish setter and an Irish terrier. The mongrel was the most interesting dog of the three, and had been taught tricks by Flossie. His name was Jingo. He was now standing on his hind legs, while the other two dogs waltzed round and round. However strong his desire to pounce upon Ginger, the pug, and Blackberry, the Pomeranian, he had to restrain himself. They might yap and bite at his toes, and try to reach his ears, as much as they pleased, but he must remain like a statue. If he endured long enough he would have a lump of sugar for his pains, which he would eat deliberately in view of his tormentors; for this halcyon moment he endured the tortures which Flossie daily subjected him to. It was really time for his sugar now, he had been on his hind legs for quite two minutes; his back was aching; he hated the feel of the sun on his head, he wanted to get into the shade, and above all things he wanted to punish Blackberry and to snap at Ginger. Flossie’s hand was in her pocket, the delicious moment had all but arrived, when Nesta’s clear, ringing voice sounded on the breeze.
“I say, Floss, I’m just in time. Oh, do come away from those stupid dogs. I have something so heavenly to tell you—it’s perfectly golloptious.”
Flossie forgot all about her dogs. Jingo mournfully descended to all fours, bit Ginger, snapped at Blackberry, and retired sulking into a corner.
Meanwhile Flossie took the arm of her friend and led her into the shade.
“How red you look,” she said. “You must have been running very fast.”
“What does that matter? I have got it; I have won it.”
“You don’t mean to say you’ve won your bet?”
“Yes, I have though. This very morning she came over—Clay, you know, and soon afterwards the Fairy Princess, and my noble elder sister was present, and she had to introduce Clay to the Princess, and it’s extremely likely that the Princess will be forced by circumstances to pay the Carters a visit at Court Prospect.”
“I wish her joy of them,” said Flossie sulkily.
“Oh, you needn’t sulk, old Floss. I’ve got my yellow-boy all for myself. Now then, I’ll tell you what. I know you’re ever so cross, and as jealous as ever you can be, but I’m going to share some of it with you.”
“You aren’t! Not really? Then if you are, I will say you’re a brick!”
Flossie’s brow cleared, her shallow black eyes danced. She looked full at Nesta.
“You and I’ll have a picnic all to ourselves,” said Nesta.
“Then you must be very quick,” replied Flossie, “for we are going to the seaside next week.”
“And the Carters are going on Saturday. I do declare I’ll have to look sharp after my yellow-boy. I tell you what—there’s nothing on earth for us to do to-day; why shouldn’t we go right away and see the Carters. I could get my money from Pen, and we’ll have a treat. We can go to Simpson’s and have ginger beer and chocolates. Wouldn’t that be prime?”
“Rather!” said Flossie, “and I’m just in the humour, for the day is frightfully hot.”
“But you don’t mind the heat—I’m sure I don’t.”
“You’re rather a show in that dress, Nesta.”
“I don’t care twopence about my dress,” said Nesta. “What I want is my darling yellow-boy. I want him and I’ll have him. We can go right away through the woods as far as our place; only perhaps that would be dangerous, for they might pounce upon me. They’re always doing it now. Before mothery got so ill we had our stated times, but now we’re never sure when we’ll be wanted. It’s Molly this, and Ethel that, and Nesta, Nesta, Nesta, all the time. I scarcely have a minute to myself. If it wasn’t for my lessons I’d simply be deaved out of all patience; but it’s hard now that there are holidays, that I can’t get away.”
“I wish you could come to the seaside with us,” said Flossie suddenly, as she thought of the yellow-boy—twenty whole shillings. Perhaps her father and mother might be induced to take Nesta with them. Her father had said only that morning:
“I am sorry for you, my little girl; you will miss your companions.”
Flossie’s father was rather proud of her friendship for Nesta Aldworth. He thought a great deal of Mr Aldworth, and spoke of him as a rising man. Oh, yes, it might be worth while to get her father and mother to invite Nesta to join them, and Nesta would have her twenty shillings. Twenty, or nineteen at least, and they might have a great many sprees at Scarborough. It would be delightful.
“I tell you what it is,” said Flossie. “There’s no earthly reason why you should stay at home. I’ll just run in this very minute and speak to mother. Why shouldn’t you come with us for a week or fortnight?”
“Do you think there’s any chance?” said Nesta, turning pale.
“There’s every possible chance. Why in the world shouldn’t you come with us? They can’t want four of you at home, and it’s downright selfish.”
“The fact is,” said Nesta, “they’re all agog to get Marcia a holiday.”
“Your elder sister—Miss Aldworth? The old maid?”
“Yes, indeed, she is that, but they all think she is looking pale, and they want her to go to those blessed St. Justs. She’s hand in glove with them, you know. She thinks of no one else on earth but that Angela of hers.”
“Well, I’m not surprised at that,” said Flossie. “Every one thinks a lot of Angela St. Just. Now, don’t keep me, I’ll rush in and speak to mother.”
She dashed into the house. The aggrieved mongrel raised a languid head and looked at her. How false she was, with that sugar in her pocket. He wagged a deprecating tail, but Flossie took no notice.
She found her mother busily engaged dusting the drawing room.
“What is it?” she said. “Are you inclined to come in and help me? This room is in a disgraceful state. I must really change Martha.”
“Oh, mother, I’ll help you another day, but I’m in such a hurry now. Nesta is outside.”
“I wonder what you’ll do without Nesta at the seaside,” said the mother.
“Oh, mother, do you think you could coax father very hard to let me invite Nesta to come with us just for a week—or even for a fortnight? I wish—I wish you would! Do you think it could be managed?”
Mrs Griffiths paused in her work to consider. She was a very frowzy, commonplace woman. She looked out of the window. There stood Nesta, pretty, careless, débonnaire—untidy enough in all truth, but decidedly above the Griffiths in her personal appearance.
Chapter Fifteen.An Unwelcome Caller.“I wouldn’t go near her now for all the world,” said Flossie, shrinking back. “Oh, my word, Nesta, do get behind this tree. You’re a perfect fright, you know, in your very oldest dress and your face as scarlet as a poppy. As to me—I wish I’d put on my Sunday-go-to-meeting frock; it isn’t as grand as theirs, but at least it has some fashion about it. But I’m in this dreadful old muslin that I’ve had for three years, and have quite outgrown. It’s awful, it really is. We can’t say anything to them to-day, we must go away.”“Go away?” said Nesta. “That’s not me. If you’re a coward, I’m not. It’s my way to strike when the iron’s hot, I can tell you. I’ll get into a scrape for this when I get home, and if there’s one thing I’ve made up my mind about, it’s this—that I won’t get into a scrape for nothing. No, if you’re frightened, say so, and sit down behind that haycock. Not a soul will see you there, and I’ll walk up just as though I were one of the guests, and shame Penelope and the others into recognising me.”“Nesta! You haven’t the courage!”“Courage?” said Nesta, “catch me wanting courage. Stay where you are; I’ll come back to you when I’ve got my yellow-boy. When that’s in my pocket I’ll come back and then you’ll have a good time. Although,” she added reflectively, “I don’t know that you deserve it, for being such an arrant little coward.”Nesta disappeared; Flossie sat and mopped her face. She was trembling with nervousness. She had never been really at home with the Carters, and she disliked immensely her present position. She wondered, too, why she cared so much for Nesta. There was nothing wonderful about Nesta. But then there was the sovereign, a whole sovereign, capable of being divided into twenty beautiful silver shillings. Flossie’s father was a very well-to-do tradesman, and could and would leave his child well off; but he was careful, and he never allowed her much pocket money. In the whole course of her life she had never possessed more than half-a-crown at a time, and to be able to have eight of those darlings, to feel that she could do what she liked with them, was a dream beyond the dreams of avarice. It is true the money would not be hers; it would be Nesta’s; but Nesta, with all her faults, was generous enough, and Flossie felt that once she had the money and was away with her friend at the seaside they could really have a good time. Flossie was very fond of her food, and she imagined how the money could be spent on little treats—shrimps or doughnuts, and whatever fruit was in season. They could have endless little picnics all to themselves on the sands. It would be a time worth remembering.Meanwhile where was Nesta? Flossie was afraid at first to venture to look round the other side of the haycock, but after a time, when she had quite cooled down, she did poke her head round. To her astonishment, envy and disgust, she saw that Nesta, in her shabby cotton frock, with her old hat on her head, was calmly walking up and down in the company of Penelope Carter. Penelope and her boy friend, and Nesta, were parading slowly up and down, up and down a corner of one of the lawns.Penelope did all that an ordinary girl could to get rid of her friend; but Nesta stuck like a leech. At last Penelope was desperate.“I am awfully sorry, Nesta, but you see we have all our sets marked out, and we—we didn’t invite you to-day. You must be tired, and if you will go into the house, Mrs Johnson will give you a cup of tea.”“But I’ve brought Flossie, Flossie Griffiths. I cannot leave her out.”“Take Flossie with you, and both have a cup of tea.”“I’ll go with pleasure, if you’ll come with me.”“But I can’t. Do speak for me, Bertie,” she continued, turning to the boy. “Say that I cannot.”“Miss Penelope is engaged to play a set of tennis with me,” said Bertie Pearson, trembling as he uttered the words, for Nesta’s aggressive manner frightened him.“She shall have her set with you as soon as I have said what I have come to say. It won’t take long; I can say it if you will come as far as the house with me, Pen. You won’t get rid of me in any other way.”Penelope fairly stamped her foot.“If I must, I must,” she said. “Bertie, keep a set open for me, like a good fellow. Come at once, Nesta.” They turned down a shady walk.“Oh, Nesta, how could you?” said Penelope, her anger breaking out the moment she found herself alone with her companion. “To come here to-day—to-day of all days, and to look like that, in your very shabbiest!”“Oh, you’re ashamed of me,” said Nesta. “You’re a nice friend!”“I am not ashamed of you,” said Penelope stoutly, “when you are fit to be seen. I like you for yourself. I always have; but I don’t think it right for a girl to thrust herself on other girls uninvited. Now, what is it you want? I am busy entertaining friends.”“Flirting with Bertie, you mean.”“I don’t flirt—how dare you say so? He is a very nice boy. He is a gentleman, and you are not a lady.”“Oh, indeed! I’m not a lady. My father’s daughter is not a lady! Wait till I tell that to Marcia.”Penelope was alarmed. She knew that if this speech reached her father’s ears he would be seriously displeased with her.“I didn’t mean that, of course, Nesta, you know I didn’t I like you for yourself, and of course you are quite a lady. All the same you oughtn’t to have come here now and—and force yourself on us.”“Well, I’ll go if you give me what I have come for.”“What is that?”They were now approaching the house by a side entrance.“You needn’t be bothered about your tea, for I don’t want it,” said Nesta. “I’m choking with thirst, but I don’t want your tea—you who have said I’m not a lady. As to Flossie, she doesn’t want your tea either. We’d rather choke than have it. There’s a shop in the High Street where we can get ginger beer and chocolates. The ginger beer will go pop and we’ll enjoy ourselves. It’s fifty times nicer than your horrid tea. But I’ll tell you what I do want—my yellow-boy.”“Your what?” said Penelope, looking at her in bewilderment.“My beautiful, precious, darling twenty shillings. Only they must be given me in gold of the realm.”“Nesta, what do you mean? Your twenty shillings!”“Come,” said Nesta, “that’s all very fine. But did you, or did you not make a bet with me?”Penelope seemed to remember. She put her hand to her forehead.“Oh, that,” she said, with a laugh. “But that was pure nonsense!”“It was a true bet; you wrote it down in your book and I wrote it down in mine. It’s as true as true can be. You wrote—I remember the words quite well—‘If Clay gets an introduction through Marcia Aldworth to Miss Angela St. Just, I will pay Nesta one sovereign; and if she fails, Nesta is to give me one sovereign.’ Now did you, or did you not, make me that bet?”“Oh, it was a bit of fun—a joke.”“It isn’t a joke; it’s real earnest. I tell you what; I’ll go straight to your father and tell him before every one present what has really happened. I’ll tell him that you made a bet and won’t keep it, for I have won,” said Nesta excitedly. “You ask Clay if I haven’t. Clay was at our house this morning, and Angela called. Blessed thing! I see nothing in her. She was introduced to your Clay, and your Clay hopes to bring her here to Court Prospect, and if I haven’t earned my sovereign, I want to know who has. So now.”“Really and truly, Nesta, I wish you wouldn’t talk so loud. Oh, look at all those people coming this way. They’ll see us, and Clay will call me. I see Clay with them.”“Let her call. I’d like her to. I’d like to explain before every one that you never kept your bet.”“Oh, do come into the house, Nesta. Do for pity’s sake.”Penelope dragged the fierce and rebellious Nesta into the house by the side door.“Now,” she said, “sit down and cool yourself. What will Bertie say? and he came here specially on my invitation. He is my guest. I’m awfully sweet on him. I am really, and—oh dear, oh dear—I don’t care about Angela St. Just, and I don’t believe that she was introduced to Clay.”“Well, you ask Clara. I’ll shout to her—I say, Clara!”“Stop, Nesta! You must be mad!”Penelope put her hand over Nesta’s mouth.“Give me my yellow-boy and I’ll be off,” she said, pushing back Penelope’s hand as she tried to force her from the window.“I haven’t got it now; I’ll bring it to-morrow.”“I won’t stir from here till I get it,” said Nesta. “I suppose with all your riches you can raise one sovereign. I want it and I’m not going away without it. Flossie and I are going to have ginger beer and chocolates at Simpson’s, in the High Street, and we’re not going to be docked of our pleasure because you are too fine a lady to care.”“Oh dear; oh dear!” said Penelope. “What is to be done? I haven’t got the money—I really haven’t.”“Well, I suppose some of you have. I see your father on the lawn; I’ll run up to him and tell him. If I talk out loud enough he will give it to me. I know he will.”“Nesta, you are driving me nearly mad!”“Let me have the money and I’ll go.”“Pen, Pen! Where are you?” called Mabel’s voice at that moment, from the garden.“They want me. Bertie will think I’ve deserted him. Oh, Nesta, you are driving me distracted.”But Nesta stood her ground. Penelope stood and reflected. She had not much money of her own, and what money she got usually melted through her fingers like water. Her sisters had long ago discovered this and entrusted her with but little. Her father always said she could have what she pleased within reason, but he never gave her any sort of allowance.“Time enough when you are grown up, Pussie,” he used to say, as he pulled her long red-gold hair.Now she looked out on the sunlit garden; on the pleasant scene, on Bertie’s elegant young figure, on the boys and girls who were disporting themselves in the sunshine and under the trees. Then she glanced at her own really elegant little person, and then at Nesta, untidy, cross, and disagreeable. How could she by any possibility have liked such a girl? She must be got rid of somehow, for there was Mabel’s voice again.“Stay a minute,” she said to Nesta. “Don’t dare to go out. I’ll get it for you somehow. You are the most horrid girl in the world.”She flew upstairs; Clara’s door was open; Clara’s room, as usual, was in disorder. Penelope frantically opened drawer after drawer. Could she find a loose sovereign anywhere? Clara often left them about; to her they meant very little. But she could find no loose money in Clara’s room. She went from there to Mabel’s; from Mabel’s to Annie’s. What possessed the girls? There wasn’t even a shilling to be found amongst their possessions. Gold bracelets in plenty, necklaces, jewellery of all sorts, but the blessed money which would restore Penelope to the lawn, to the tennis court, to all her delights, was not forthcoming.Her father’s room came last. She rushed into it. Nesta was desperate; Nesta might confront her father on the lawn. She would tell him in the evening—he would forgive her. She ran in; she opened one of his drawers and took out a purse which he kept there to pay the men’s wages on Saturday. Invariably each Monday morning he put the required sum into that special old purse. There were twenty sovereigns in it now. Penelope helped herself to one, snapped the purse to, shut the drawer, and ran downstairs.“There!” she said to Nesta. “Now, for goodness’ sake go. Don’t worry me whatever happens. I’ve given it to you, and I’m free; but catch me ever making a bet with you again.”“Oh, I don’t care!” said Nesta. “My darling little yellow-boy. Thank you, Penelope, thank you.”But Penelope had vanished.
“I wouldn’t go near her now for all the world,” said Flossie, shrinking back. “Oh, my word, Nesta, do get behind this tree. You’re a perfect fright, you know, in your very oldest dress and your face as scarlet as a poppy. As to me—I wish I’d put on my Sunday-go-to-meeting frock; it isn’t as grand as theirs, but at least it has some fashion about it. But I’m in this dreadful old muslin that I’ve had for three years, and have quite outgrown. It’s awful, it really is. We can’t say anything to them to-day, we must go away.”
“Go away?” said Nesta. “That’s not me. If you’re a coward, I’m not. It’s my way to strike when the iron’s hot, I can tell you. I’ll get into a scrape for this when I get home, and if there’s one thing I’ve made up my mind about, it’s this—that I won’t get into a scrape for nothing. No, if you’re frightened, say so, and sit down behind that haycock. Not a soul will see you there, and I’ll walk up just as though I were one of the guests, and shame Penelope and the others into recognising me.”
“Nesta! You haven’t the courage!”
“Courage?” said Nesta, “catch me wanting courage. Stay where you are; I’ll come back to you when I’ve got my yellow-boy. When that’s in my pocket I’ll come back and then you’ll have a good time. Although,” she added reflectively, “I don’t know that you deserve it, for being such an arrant little coward.”
Nesta disappeared; Flossie sat and mopped her face. She was trembling with nervousness. She had never been really at home with the Carters, and she disliked immensely her present position. She wondered, too, why she cared so much for Nesta. There was nothing wonderful about Nesta. But then there was the sovereign, a whole sovereign, capable of being divided into twenty beautiful silver shillings. Flossie’s father was a very well-to-do tradesman, and could and would leave his child well off; but he was careful, and he never allowed her much pocket money. In the whole course of her life she had never possessed more than half-a-crown at a time, and to be able to have eight of those darlings, to feel that she could do what she liked with them, was a dream beyond the dreams of avarice. It is true the money would not be hers; it would be Nesta’s; but Nesta, with all her faults, was generous enough, and Flossie felt that once she had the money and was away with her friend at the seaside they could really have a good time. Flossie was very fond of her food, and she imagined how the money could be spent on little treats—shrimps or doughnuts, and whatever fruit was in season. They could have endless little picnics all to themselves on the sands. It would be a time worth remembering.
Meanwhile where was Nesta? Flossie was afraid at first to venture to look round the other side of the haycock, but after a time, when she had quite cooled down, she did poke her head round. To her astonishment, envy and disgust, she saw that Nesta, in her shabby cotton frock, with her old hat on her head, was calmly walking up and down in the company of Penelope Carter. Penelope and her boy friend, and Nesta, were parading slowly up and down, up and down a corner of one of the lawns.
Penelope did all that an ordinary girl could to get rid of her friend; but Nesta stuck like a leech. At last Penelope was desperate.
“I am awfully sorry, Nesta, but you see we have all our sets marked out, and we—we didn’t invite you to-day. You must be tired, and if you will go into the house, Mrs Johnson will give you a cup of tea.”
“But I’ve brought Flossie, Flossie Griffiths. I cannot leave her out.”
“Take Flossie with you, and both have a cup of tea.”
“I’ll go with pleasure, if you’ll come with me.”
“But I can’t. Do speak for me, Bertie,” she continued, turning to the boy. “Say that I cannot.”
“Miss Penelope is engaged to play a set of tennis with me,” said Bertie Pearson, trembling as he uttered the words, for Nesta’s aggressive manner frightened him.
“She shall have her set with you as soon as I have said what I have come to say. It won’t take long; I can say it if you will come as far as the house with me, Pen. You won’t get rid of me in any other way.”
Penelope fairly stamped her foot.
“If I must, I must,” she said. “Bertie, keep a set open for me, like a good fellow. Come at once, Nesta.” They turned down a shady walk.
“Oh, Nesta, how could you?” said Penelope, her anger breaking out the moment she found herself alone with her companion. “To come here to-day—to-day of all days, and to look like that, in your very shabbiest!”
“Oh, you’re ashamed of me,” said Nesta. “You’re a nice friend!”
“I am not ashamed of you,” said Penelope stoutly, “when you are fit to be seen. I like you for yourself. I always have; but I don’t think it right for a girl to thrust herself on other girls uninvited. Now, what is it you want? I am busy entertaining friends.”
“Flirting with Bertie, you mean.”
“I don’t flirt—how dare you say so? He is a very nice boy. He is a gentleman, and you are not a lady.”
“Oh, indeed! I’m not a lady. My father’s daughter is not a lady! Wait till I tell that to Marcia.”
Penelope was alarmed. She knew that if this speech reached her father’s ears he would be seriously displeased with her.
“I didn’t mean that, of course, Nesta, you know I didn’t I like you for yourself, and of course you are quite a lady. All the same you oughtn’t to have come here now and—and force yourself on us.”
“Well, I’ll go if you give me what I have come for.”
“What is that?”
They were now approaching the house by a side entrance.
“You needn’t be bothered about your tea, for I don’t want it,” said Nesta. “I’m choking with thirst, but I don’t want your tea—you who have said I’m not a lady. As to Flossie, she doesn’t want your tea either. We’d rather choke than have it. There’s a shop in the High Street where we can get ginger beer and chocolates. The ginger beer will go pop and we’ll enjoy ourselves. It’s fifty times nicer than your horrid tea. But I’ll tell you what I do want—my yellow-boy.”
“Your what?” said Penelope, looking at her in bewilderment.
“My beautiful, precious, darling twenty shillings. Only they must be given me in gold of the realm.”
“Nesta, what do you mean? Your twenty shillings!”
“Come,” said Nesta, “that’s all very fine. But did you, or did you not make a bet with me?”
Penelope seemed to remember. She put her hand to her forehead.
“Oh, that,” she said, with a laugh. “But that was pure nonsense!”
“It was a true bet; you wrote it down in your book and I wrote it down in mine. It’s as true as true can be. You wrote—I remember the words quite well—‘If Clay gets an introduction through Marcia Aldworth to Miss Angela St. Just, I will pay Nesta one sovereign; and if she fails, Nesta is to give me one sovereign.’ Now did you, or did you not, make me that bet?”
“Oh, it was a bit of fun—a joke.”
“It isn’t a joke; it’s real earnest. I tell you what; I’ll go straight to your father and tell him before every one present what has really happened. I’ll tell him that you made a bet and won’t keep it, for I have won,” said Nesta excitedly. “You ask Clay if I haven’t. Clay was at our house this morning, and Angela called. Blessed thing! I see nothing in her. She was introduced to your Clay, and your Clay hopes to bring her here to Court Prospect, and if I haven’t earned my sovereign, I want to know who has. So now.”
“Really and truly, Nesta, I wish you wouldn’t talk so loud. Oh, look at all those people coming this way. They’ll see us, and Clay will call me. I see Clay with them.”
“Let her call. I’d like her to. I’d like to explain before every one that you never kept your bet.”
“Oh, do come into the house, Nesta. Do for pity’s sake.”
Penelope dragged the fierce and rebellious Nesta into the house by the side door.
“Now,” she said, “sit down and cool yourself. What will Bertie say? and he came here specially on my invitation. He is my guest. I’m awfully sweet on him. I am really, and—oh dear, oh dear—I don’t care about Angela St. Just, and I don’t believe that she was introduced to Clay.”
“Well, you ask Clara. I’ll shout to her—I say, Clara!”
“Stop, Nesta! You must be mad!”
Penelope put her hand over Nesta’s mouth.
“Give me my yellow-boy and I’ll be off,” she said, pushing back Penelope’s hand as she tried to force her from the window.
“I haven’t got it now; I’ll bring it to-morrow.”
“I won’t stir from here till I get it,” said Nesta. “I suppose with all your riches you can raise one sovereign. I want it and I’m not going away without it. Flossie and I are going to have ginger beer and chocolates at Simpson’s, in the High Street, and we’re not going to be docked of our pleasure because you are too fine a lady to care.”
“Oh dear; oh dear!” said Penelope. “What is to be done? I haven’t got the money—I really haven’t.”
“Well, I suppose some of you have. I see your father on the lawn; I’ll run up to him and tell him. If I talk out loud enough he will give it to me. I know he will.”
“Nesta, you are driving me nearly mad!”
“Let me have the money and I’ll go.”
“Pen, Pen! Where are you?” called Mabel’s voice at that moment, from the garden.
“They want me. Bertie will think I’ve deserted him. Oh, Nesta, you are driving me distracted.”
But Nesta stood her ground. Penelope stood and reflected. She had not much money of her own, and what money she got usually melted through her fingers like water. Her sisters had long ago discovered this and entrusted her with but little. Her father always said she could have what she pleased within reason, but he never gave her any sort of allowance.
“Time enough when you are grown up, Pussie,” he used to say, as he pulled her long red-gold hair.
Now she looked out on the sunlit garden; on the pleasant scene, on Bertie’s elegant young figure, on the boys and girls who were disporting themselves in the sunshine and under the trees. Then she glanced at her own really elegant little person, and then at Nesta, untidy, cross, and disagreeable. How could she by any possibility have liked such a girl? She must be got rid of somehow, for there was Mabel’s voice again.
“Stay a minute,” she said to Nesta. “Don’t dare to go out. I’ll get it for you somehow. You are the most horrid girl in the world.”
She flew upstairs; Clara’s door was open; Clara’s room, as usual, was in disorder. Penelope frantically opened drawer after drawer. Could she find a loose sovereign anywhere? Clara often left them about; to her they meant very little. But she could find no loose money in Clara’s room. She went from there to Mabel’s; from Mabel’s to Annie’s. What possessed the girls? There wasn’t even a shilling to be found amongst their possessions. Gold bracelets in plenty, necklaces, jewellery of all sorts, but the blessed money which would restore Penelope to the lawn, to the tennis court, to all her delights, was not forthcoming.
Her father’s room came last. She rushed into it. Nesta was desperate; Nesta might confront her father on the lawn. She would tell him in the evening—he would forgive her. She ran in; she opened one of his drawers and took out a purse which he kept there to pay the men’s wages on Saturday. Invariably each Monday morning he put the required sum into that special old purse. There were twenty sovereigns in it now. Penelope helped herself to one, snapped the purse to, shut the drawer, and ran downstairs.
“There!” she said to Nesta. “Now, for goodness’ sake go. Don’t worry me whatever happens. I’ve given it to you, and I’m free; but catch me ever making a bet with you again.”
“Oh, I don’t care!” said Nesta. “My darling little yellow-boy. Thank you, Penelope, thank you.”
But Penelope had vanished.
Chapter Sixteen.Troublesome Consequences.On the whole Penelope Carter was a fairly good child. She had been very cross when disturbed by Nesta; but when she returned to the lawn her good humour immediately came back. She looked almost pretty, for there was much more character in her face than her sisters’. She ran about now, charming many people by her bright presence, and more than one visitor remarked that Penelope would be the best-looking of the Carters, and certainly had more character in her face than her sisters.The gay party came to an end, and with it, some of Penelope’s good spirits. When she had taken the sovereign from her father’s purse, she had certainly not had the slightest idea of concealing the fact from him. A sovereign, as she knew, meant but little in that establishment. He would thank her for not allowing that wicked Nesta to disgrace him in public. He would pat her on the cheek and say: “Well done, little woman; I am glad you were good enough to confess!” and there would be an end of the matter.This was Penelope’s thought in cold blood; but when she reflected more over the matter, it seemed to her that the thing was not so easy as it had appeared when in the heat of the conflict with Nesta she had purloined the money. Mr Carter was very fond of his children; he was a very good-hearted, upright sort of man, ambitious, but without a scrap of taste; thoroughly upright and honest in all his dealings; he did not owe a penny in the world. He had made his money by honest toil, and he was proud of it. To rise in the opinion of the world seemed to him a very laudable thing to do. He hoped to establish his children well in the world. He hoped that his daughters would marry gentlemen, and his sons ladies. He hoped to die in a better position than that in which he was born. For this reason he encouraged the Aldworths, and rather snubbed the Griffiths; and for the same reason he was anxious to become acquainted with the St. Justs, not in a business capacity, but as a friend. He had none of the finer perceptions of character. It never occurred to him that it might be painful to Sir Edward to visit his old home under such changed conditions. On the contrary, he thought how agreeable it would be to show the ex-owner how much better the place looked since Clay had suggested the cutting down of those magnificent trees, and the opening up of that glade. What a beautiful tennis lawn that was, where the ancient garden used to stand. It never occurred to him for a single moment that the bric-à-brac, the beautiful furniture, the old pictures, the old oak which had belonged to the St. Justs, was not more than replaced by the modern splendours of modern and depraved taste. These things he knew nothing about. He was exceedingly anxious to know the St. Justs and their set, and would have given a good deal more than the sovereign which poor Penelope had taken to attain that object.Nevertheless, Penelope felt that the whole thing had an ugly appearance on the present occasion. The sovereign, however, must be put back in the purse, or the truth confessed before Saturday morning, that was evident. This was Wednesday. There was all Thursday and Friday. There would be a little packing to do—not that Penelope would trouble herself about that—but there would be a little commotion in getting the family off to the sea. Her father was not going with them, at least not for the first few days, but he would follow.That evening Penelope determined to make a confidante of her sister, Clara.Clara was in a specially good humour. She had had, as she expressed it, a stunning day, one long series of triumphs, as she said now to her sisters, Mabel and Annie, as they clustered round her.“Oh, and there’s little Pen,” she cried. “Come along, Penelope. You looked quite nice to-day. You’ll take the shine out of us all when you are grown up. One or two people asked me who you were. Your hair is so pretty, and you will be taller than the rest of us.”“I don’t care,” said Penelope.Clara pinched her cheek.“You don’t care? But you will care fast enough when you are older, and when you have several Berties walking with you, and other fellows anxious to get introductions to you. You wait and see.”Penelope looked what she felt, cross and discontented.“What is it, Puss? What are you frowning about?”“I’m only thinking. I want to have a talk with you all by myself.”“Oh, indeed, and so we’re not to be with you?” said Mabel in some surprise.“No, I want old Clay. Can’t I go somewhere with you all by yourself, Clara?”Now this sort of homage was sweet to Clara. She kissed the child, and said affectionately:“Well, I’m a bit tired; what with running about all over the place and entertaining folks, I don’t seem to have a leg to stand on; but I suppose we can just cross the lawn and get into the summerhouse and have a chat. Come along, Pen.”Penelope fastened herself on to her elder sister’s arm and they went across to the summerhouse in question.“Now, then,” said Clara, somewhat severely, “they tell me that I spoil you.”“Oh, but you don’t, Clay, you are ever so nice to me.”“Well, I don’t mean to spoil you. Of course, these are holiday times; but when lessons begin again I am going to be ever so strict. It has just occurred to me that I might get an introduction for you through Miss Angela St. Just to that charming school at Frankfort.”“What charming school at Frankfort?” asked Penelope. “Frankfort—where’s that?”“Oh, you dreadful child! Don’t you know?”“I hate geography. I don’t want to learn. I don’t want to be a good, model, knowledgeable girl. And I hate Miss Just. I do; so there!”“Well, Penelope, you are a good deal too young to choose for yourself, and if father can get an introduction to Mrs Silchester, I am sure he will avail himself of it. The school is most select; only the very nicest of girls go there.”“Isn’t it the school where that horrid Marcia Aldworth was—that detestable old-maid thing.”“She is an exceedingly nice girl.”“Clay! As though she suited you one little bit! Why, I saw her one day, and she was as pokery as possible.”“But she is a friend of Miss St. Just’s.”“Oh, Clay! Clay! I will be good; I will be good, and we needn’t talk of that horrid school just now, need we, just when my long beautiful holidays are beginning. I will be good, I will, if you will only help me.”“Well, Puss, what can I do?”“I did something to-day—it wasn’t really wrong, but I am a bit frightened. I must tell you.”“You are a queer little thing—what can it be?” Penelope looked full up at her sister.“You are as proud as Punch—you are, you old thing! And now I shall whisper to you why you are go proud?”“Yes, do; whisper to me.”“You have got to know that Miss St. Just—that idol of yours, that angel up in the clouds that you are always thinking is too good for this world; you got to know her to-day at the Aldworths’.”“I did, and I find her not at all an angel up in the clouds, but a very pretty and sweet angel with her feet on the solid earth. And she is ever so pleased to know me; she showed it, and spoke about Court Prospect, and I described how we had improved it, and she was so interested. I asked her if she would come to see it, and I’m convinced she will come, and right gladly. I’m going to tell father all about it. Father will be pleased.”“Then, that’s all right. If you tell father about that at the same time you are telling him about me, why it will be all right.”“About you? What in the world about you?”“Oh, I’m coming to that. You remember that time when that Nesta was staying here?”“That Nesta. I thought you adored her.”“I don’t adore her; I dislike her very much. She is not a bit a nice girl. She is of the Flossie Griffiths style, and you know quite well father wouldn’t like us to associate with the Griffiths.”“I should think not, indeed,” said Clara.She had visions, of herself as the special friend of Angela St. Just, of visiting Hurst Castle, of getting to know the county folks. She had visions of Angela reposing in the spare room at Court Prospect, with its gilt and ormolu and white paint, which used to be called the Cedar room in the days of the St. Justs. She had visions of Angela laying her head on the richly embroidered linen, and saying to herself, “What cannot money do to improve a place.”Among the many thoughts which flitted into her brain, she forgot Pen’s anxious, little piquant face, and just at that moment Mr Carter came along. He paused, stared at his two daughters, and came deliberately in.“There, now, Pen, if you want to say anything to father, you can say it yourself; here he is. Father, Penelope wants to speak to you about something.”“No, I don’t—I don’t,” said Penelope, all her courage oozing out, as she expressed it, at her finger tips.“Then if Penelope has nothing to say, I have,” said Clara, who being quite selfish and commonplace, forgot the wistfulness which had gathered for a moment round her little sister’s face.Penelope stole away.“I’ll tell Clay in the morning,” she said. “Father won’t miss the money before Saturday. I’ll tell old Clay to-morrow.”Meanwhile Clara poured the welcome news into her father’s ears that the introduction to Miss St. Just had been accomplished. He was quite elated.“That’s capital,” he said. “We must make much of that girl, the eldest Miss Aldworth. She is worth twenty of her sisters.”“Of course she is, father; I have always said so.”“Have you now, Clay? I shouldn’t have guessed it. I thought you were entirely taken up with Miss Ethel and Miss Molly, and that little Nesta. Nesta seems to me to be the best of the bunch—a rollicking little thing, and full of daring. By the way, I saw her here to-day, and our Pen with her. What did she come about?”“Nesta here to-day? I didn’t see her,” said Clara.“Well, I did. She and Pen seemed to be having a sort of quarrel. You had best say nothing about it. Those sort of quarrels between girls soon melt into thin air when you take no notice of them. But I tell you what; this is good news. We’ll have a big function after we have spent our month at the seaside. I know for a fact that the St. Justs are going to be at Hurst Castle for the entire season, and when you return, Clay, we’ll just do the thing in topping style. I’ll induce Sir Edward and his daughter to come here and stay for the night I think I can manage the old gentleman.”Here a peculiar knowing expression passed over Mr Carter’s face. Clara watched him.“What a clever old dad it is,” she said.“You’d like it, wouldn’t you, Clay?” he said, putting his hand under her chin and turning her face round until he looked at her. “Upon my word you have a look of your mother, child. I was very fond of her,” he continued, and then he stooped and printed an unlooked-for kiss on Clara’s young cheek.She was unaccustomed to special attentions from her parent.“I’d be ever so glad if they came,” she said. “And I’m sure if you wish it they will come.”“Yes, it’s all right now that you’ve been introduced to Miss Angela. Now, look here; couldn’t we send them a present of fruit—fruit from the garden? They’d like some fruit from their own old garden, wouldn’t they now?”Clara saw no impropriety in that.“Fruit and vegetables; we’d send some vegetables, too,” said Mr Carter. “Those marrowfat peas are just in their prime. We might send them a couple of pecks, and—and some peaches; they are just getting perfectly ripe now in the hothouses—peaches, nectarines, apricots, peas, and a few melons wouldn’t be unacceptable, would they? What do you say, eh?”“Just as you like, Dad, of course.”Clara went off to the house to inform her sisters of what was happening. Penelope had gone to bed.“Why, where is Pen?” she said.“I don’t know; she seems to be sulky, and she said she had a headache. She’ll sleep it off; don’t bother about her,” said Annie, with a yawn.The elder sister sat down and divulged to the younger ones what was about to happen.“We’ve got,” she said, “rather to drop the Aldworths—they’re all very well in their way, but with the exception of Marcia, father doesn’t want us to see too much of them.”“I’m heartily glad,” said Mabel; “I’m about sick of them.”“I call it beastly meant—” said Jim, raising his face from where he was apparently buried in the pages of a magazine.“Hullo!” cried Clara. “You there? What are you listening to us for?”“Well, I don’t care—I call it beastly mean to drop people when you have once taken them up so strongly, more particularly when you have achieved your object.”“And pray what’s that?”“You know quite well you have been angling to get an introduction to Miss Angela St. Just. Well, I happen to know that you’ve got it, and now you want to drop the girls.”“Not Marcia,” said Clay; “we are quite willing to be friends with her. She must come and stay with us—it is her turn. It will be delightful to have her here with Angela St. Just.”“I call it beastly free of you to call her by her Christian name.”“Jim, I wish you’d mind your manners. I’m sure I’m not half so rude in my speech as you are, and of course I wouldn’t call her that to her face.”“I should hope not indeed,” said Jim. “I don’t understand girls, and that’s the truth.”He marched away. The night was a dark one, but warm. He went down through the shrubbery; he passed a little arbour where Clara and Penelope had had their interrupted conference a little earlier in the evening. He thought he heard some one sobbing. The sound smote on his ear.“Hullo,” he said, “who’s there?”The sobs ceased; there was dead silence. He went in, struck a match, and saw Penelope crouched in a corner.“Why you poor little wretch,” he said, “what in the world is wrong with you? Why are you out here by yourself, and crying as though your heart would break? Why, a poacher might come across you, and then what a fright you’d get!”“A poacher? You don’t really think so, Jim?”“Of course I don’t; but you are as cold as charity. Here, snuggle up to me. What’s the matter, old girl?”“Oh, Jim, I stole a sovereign from father to-day; I took it out of his purse in his bedroom when all the visitors were here. I opened the drawer and took a sovereign out of the purse and slipped it into my pocket. At the time I thought I’d tell him, but now I haven’t the courage. I thought perhaps Clay would tell him, but I couldn’t get it out—Oh, I’m a very miserable girl. I don’t know what to do—”“But tell me,” said Jim, “what in the world did you want with a sovereign? To think that my sister should steal just like the commonest, lowest-minded, most unprincipled girl.”“Oh, don’t rub it in so hard, Jim. Don’t, don’t,” said Penelope.“Well, tell me all about it.”She did tell him.“It was Nesta—we had a bet—it was about Clay and that horrid St. Just girl. We made a bet that if Clay got an introduction through Marcia Aldworth that Nesta should have a sovereign; but if it was the other way, I was to have the sovereign. I didn’t think about it, for I knew she could never pay it if she lost, but somehow or other it all came about as she wished, and she came tearing over with that horrid friend of hers, Flossie Griffiths, and dashed into the middle of our party. She would speak to me, and she took me away and demanded the money. I did what I could to put her off; but she said she’d go straight to father and tell him before every one that I had made a bet and broken it. So I was desperate; I took the only money I could find. Oh, what am I to do; what am I to do? Do you think father will be frightfully angry?”“I expect he won’t much like it.”“Oh, Jim, what am I to do?”“I’ll see about it,” said Jim. “Now, look here, Pen, I’m not going to let you off altogether; it would not be right; but you are a good, brave child to have told me, and I am glad to know: You might have done worse, and you might have done better. I didn’t know that a sister of mine could be bullied by that sort of girl. I should like to give that Nesta a piece of my mind. I vow I should.”“But what will father say on Saturday?”“You’ll have to own up. I could give you the sovereign, of course, and you could put it back into his purse, but that wouldn’t teach you a lesson. We fellows at school—we boys, wouldn’t do a thing of that sort, and it wouldn’t be straight for me to shield you, and let you put the money back without telling him anything about it. But I’ll help you to tell father. Now, you can go straight off to bed. I’ll help you, old girl, when you are telling him. Good-night, good-night.”“You are a brick! You are a dear,” said Pen. She crushed her face against his cheek; he felt her tears and rubbed them away shamefacedly afterwards.For some time he sat on in the little summerhouse in which Angela St. Just had sat when a child, and which had not yet been destroyed for a more elegant and modern edifice. When he went back to the house it was to ponder over many things. Jim was the most thoughtful of the family; he had grit in him, which was more than any of the other Carters, their father excepted, possessed.
On the whole Penelope Carter was a fairly good child. She had been very cross when disturbed by Nesta; but when she returned to the lawn her good humour immediately came back. She looked almost pretty, for there was much more character in her face than her sisters’. She ran about now, charming many people by her bright presence, and more than one visitor remarked that Penelope would be the best-looking of the Carters, and certainly had more character in her face than her sisters.
The gay party came to an end, and with it, some of Penelope’s good spirits. When she had taken the sovereign from her father’s purse, she had certainly not had the slightest idea of concealing the fact from him. A sovereign, as she knew, meant but little in that establishment. He would thank her for not allowing that wicked Nesta to disgrace him in public. He would pat her on the cheek and say: “Well done, little woman; I am glad you were good enough to confess!” and there would be an end of the matter.
This was Penelope’s thought in cold blood; but when she reflected more over the matter, it seemed to her that the thing was not so easy as it had appeared when in the heat of the conflict with Nesta she had purloined the money. Mr Carter was very fond of his children; he was a very good-hearted, upright sort of man, ambitious, but without a scrap of taste; thoroughly upright and honest in all his dealings; he did not owe a penny in the world. He had made his money by honest toil, and he was proud of it. To rise in the opinion of the world seemed to him a very laudable thing to do. He hoped to establish his children well in the world. He hoped that his daughters would marry gentlemen, and his sons ladies. He hoped to die in a better position than that in which he was born. For this reason he encouraged the Aldworths, and rather snubbed the Griffiths; and for the same reason he was anxious to become acquainted with the St. Justs, not in a business capacity, but as a friend. He had none of the finer perceptions of character. It never occurred to him that it might be painful to Sir Edward to visit his old home under such changed conditions. On the contrary, he thought how agreeable it would be to show the ex-owner how much better the place looked since Clay had suggested the cutting down of those magnificent trees, and the opening up of that glade. What a beautiful tennis lawn that was, where the ancient garden used to stand. It never occurred to him for a single moment that the bric-à-brac, the beautiful furniture, the old pictures, the old oak which had belonged to the St. Justs, was not more than replaced by the modern splendours of modern and depraved taste. These things he knew nothing about. He was exceedingly anxious to know the St. Justs and their set, and would have given a good deal more than the sovereign which poor Penelope had taken to attain that object.
Nevertheless, Penelope felt that the whole thing had an ugly appearance on the present occasion. The sovereign, however, must be put back in the purse, or the truth confessed before Saturday morning, that was evident. This was Wednesday. There was all Thursday and Friday. There would be a little packing to do—not that Penelope would trouble herself about that—but there would be a little commotion in getting the family off to the sea. Her father was not going with them, at least not for the first few days, but he would follow.
That evening Penelope determined to make a confidante of her sister, Clara.
Clara was in a specially good humour. She had had, as she expressed it, a stunning day, one long series of triumphs, as she said now to her sisters, Mabel and Annie, as they clustered round her.
“Oh, and there’s little Pen,” she cried. “Come along, Penelope. You looked quite nice to-day. You’ll take the shine out of us all when you are grown up. One or two people asked me who you were. Your hair is so pretty, and you will be taller than the rest of us.”
“I don’t care,” said Penelope.
Clara pinched her cheek.
“You don’t care? But you will care fast enough when you are older, and when you have several Berties walking with you, and other fellows anxious to get introductions to you. You wait and see.”
Penelope looked what she felt, cross and discontented.
“What is it, Puss? What are you frowning about?”
“I’m only thinking. I want to have a talk with you all by myself.”
“Oh, indeed, and so we’re not to be with you?” said Mabel in some surprise.
“No, I want old Clay. Can’t I go somewhere with you all by yourself, Clara?”
Now this sort of homage was sweet to Clara. She kissed the child, and said affectionately:
“Well, I’m a bit tired; what with running about all over the place and entertaining folks, I don’t seem to have a leg to stand on; but I suppose we can just cross the lawn and get into the summerhouse and have a chat. Come along, Pen.”
Penelope fastened herself on to her elder sister’s arm and they went across to the summerhouse in question.
“Now, then,” said Clara, somewhat severely, “they tell me that I spoil you.”
“Oh, but you don’t, Clay, you are ever so nice to me.”
“Well, I don’t mean to spoil you. Of course, these are holiday times; but when lessons begin again I am going to be ever so strict. It has just occurred to me that I might get an introduction for you through Miss Angela St. Just to that charming school at Frankfort.”
“What charming school at Frankfort?” asked Penelope. “Frankfort—where’s that?”
“Oh, you dreadful child! Don’t you know?”
“I hate geography. I don’t want to learn. I don’t want to be a good, model, knowledgeable girl. And I hate Miss Just. I do; so there!”
“Well, Penelope, you are a good deal too young to choose for yourself, and if father can get an introduction to Mrs Silchester, I am sure he will avail himself of it. The school is most select; only the very nicest of girls go there.”
“Isn’t it the school where that horrid Marcia Aldworth was—that detestable old-maid thing.”
“She is an exceedingly nice girl.”
“Clay! As though she suited you one little bit! Why, I saw her one day, and she was as pokery as possible.”
“But she is a friend of Miss St. Just’s.”
“Oh, Clay! Clay! I will be good; I will be good, and we needn’t talk of that horrid school just now, need we, just when my long beautiful holidays are beginning. I will be good, I will, if you will only help me.”
“Well, Puss, what can I do?”
“I did something to-day—it wasn’t really wrong, but I am a bit frightened. I must tell you.”
“You are a queer little thing—what can it be?” Penelope looked full up at her sister.
“You are as proud as Punch—you are, you old thing! And now I shall whisper to you why you are go proud?”
“Yes, do; whisper to me.”
“You have got to know that Miss St. Just—that idol of yours, that angel up in the clouds that you are always thinking is too good for this world; you got to know her to-day at the Aldworths’.”
“I did, and I find her not at all an angel up in the clouds, but a very pretty and sweet angel with her feet on the solid earth. And she is ever so pleased to know me; she showed it, and spoke about Court Prospect, and I described how we had improved it, and she was so interested. I asked her if she would come to see it, and I’m convinced she will come, and right gladly. I’m going to tell father all about it. Father will be pleased.”
“Then, that’s all right. If you tell father about that at the same time you are telling him about me, why it will be all right.”
“About you? What in the world about you?”
“Oh, I’m coming to that. You remember that time when that Nesta was staying here?”
“That Nesta. I thought you adored her.”
“I don’t adore her; I dislike her very much. She is not a bit a nice girl. She is of the Flossie Griffiths style, and you know quite well father wouldn’t like us to associate with the Griffiths.”
“I should think not, indeed,” said Clara.
She had visions, of herself as the special friend of Angela St. Just, of visiting Hurst Castle, of getting to know the county folks. She had visions of Angela reposing in the spare room at Court Prospect, with its gilt and ormolu and white paint, which used to be called the Cedar room in the days of the St. Justs. She had visions of Angela laying her head on the richly embroidered linen, and saying to herself, “What cannot money do to improve a place.”
Among the many thoughts which flitted into her brain, she forgot Pen’s anxious, little piquant face, and just at that moment Mr Carter came along. He paused, stared at his two daughters, and came deliberately in.
“There, now, Pen, if you want to say anything to father, you can say it yourself; here he is. Father, Penelope wants to speak to you about something.”
“No, I don’t—I don’t,” said Penelope, all her courage oozing out, as she expressed it, at her finger tips.
“Then if Penelope has nothing to say, I have,” said Clara, who being quite selfish and commonplace, forgot the wistfulness which had gathered for a moment round her little sister’s face.
Penelope stole away.
“I’ll tell Clay in the morning,” she said. “Father won’t miss the money before Saturday. I’ll tell old Clay to-morrow.”
Meanwhile Clara poured the welcome news into her father’s ears that the introduction to Miss St. Just had been accomplished. He was quite elated.
“That’s capital,” he said. “We must make much of that girl, the eldest Miss Aldworth. She is worth twenty of her sisters.”
“Of course she is, father; I have always said so.”
“Have you now, Clay? I shouldn’t have guessed it. I thought you were entirely taken up with Miss Ethel and Miss Molly, and that little Nesta. Nesta seems to me to be the best of the bunch—a rollicking little thing, and full of daring. By the way, I saw her here to-day, and our Pen with her. What did she come about?”
“Nesta here to-day? I didn’t see her,” said Clara.
“Well, I did. She and Pen seemed to be having a sort of quarrel. You had best say nothing about it. Those sort of quarrels between girls soon melt into thin air when you take no notice of them. But I tell you what; this is good news. We’ll have a big function after we have spent our month at the seaside. I know for a fact that the St. Justs are going to be at Hurst Castle for the entire season, and when you return, Clay, we’ll just do the thing in topping style. I’ll induce Sir Edward and his daughter to come here and stay for the night I think I can manage the old gentleman.”
Here a peculiar knowing expression passed over Mr Carter’s face. Clara watched him.
“What a clever old dad it is,” she said.
“You’d like it, wouldn’t you, Clay?” he said, putting his hand under her chin and turning her face round until he looked at her. “Upon my word you have a look of your mother, child. I was very fond of her,” he continued, and then he stooped and printed an unlooked-for kiss on Clara’s young cheek.
She was unaccustomed to special attentions from her parent.
“I’d be ever so glad if they came,” she said. “And I’m sure if you wish it they will come.”
“Yes, it’s all right now that you’ve been introduced to Miss Angela. Now, look here; couldn’t we send them a present of fruit—fruit from the garden? They’d like some fruit from their own old garden, wouldn’t they now?”
Clara saw no impropriety in that.
“Fruit and vegetables; we’d send some vegetables, too,” said Mr Carter. “Those marrowfat peas are just in their prime. We might send them a couple of pecks, and—and some peaches; they are just getting perfectly ripe now in the hothouses—peaches, nectarines, apricots, peas, and a few melons wouldn’t be unacceptable, would they? What do you say, eh?”
“Just as you like, Dad, of course.”
Clara went off to the house to inform her sisters of what was happening. Penelope had gone to bed.
“Why, where is Pen?” she said.
“I don’t know; she seems to be sulky, and she said she had a headache. She’ll sleep it off; don’t bother about her,” said Annie, with a yawn.
The elder sister sat down and divulged to the younger ones what was about to happen.
“We’ve got,” she said, “rather to drop the Aldworths—they’re all very well in their way, but with the exception of Marcia, father doesn’t want us to see too much of them.”
“I’m heartily glad,” said Mabel; “I’m about sick of them.”
“I call it beastly meant—” said Jim, raising his face from where he was apparently buried in the pages of a magazine.
“Hullo!” cried Clara. “You there? What are you listening to us for?”
“Well, I don’t care—I call it beastly mean to drop people when you have once taken them up so strongly, more particularly when you have achieved your object.”
“And pray what’s that?”
“You know quite well you have been angling to get an introduction to Miss Angela St. Just. Well, I happen to know that you’ve got it, and now you want to drop the girls.”
“Not Marcia,” said Clay; “we are quite willing to be friends with her. She must come and stay with us—it is her turn. It will be delightful to have her here with Angela St. Just.”
“I call it beastly free of you to call her by her Christian name.”
“Jim, I wish you’d mind your manners. I’m sure I’m not half so rude in my speech as you are, and of course I wouldn’t call her that to her face.”
“I should hope not indeed,” said Jim. “I don’t understand girls, and that’s the truth.”
He marched away. The night was a dark one, but warm. He went down through the shrubbery; he passed a little arbour where Clara and Penelope had had their interrupted conference a little earlier in the evening. He thought he heard some one sobbing. The sound smote on his ear.
“Hullo,” he said, “who’s there?”
The sobs ceased; there was dead silence. He went in, struck a match, and saw Penelope crouched in a corner.
“Why you poor little wretch,” he said, “what in the world is wrong with you? Why are you out here by yourself, and crying as though your heart would break? Why, a poacher might come across you, and then what a fright you’d get!”
“A poacher? You don’t really think so, Jim?”
“Of course I don’t; but you are as cold as charity. Here, snuggle up to me. What’s the matter, old girl?”
“Oh, Jim, I stole a sovereign from father to-day; I took it out of his purse in his bedroom when all the visitors were here. I opened the drawer and took a sovereign out of the purse and slipped it into my pocket. At the time I thought I’d tell him, but now I haven’t the courage. I thought perhaps Clay would tell him, but I couldn’t get it out—Oh, I’m a very miserable girl. I don’t know what to do—”
“But tell me,” said Jim, “what in the world did you want with a sovereign? To think that my sister should steal just like the commonest, lowest-minded, most unprincipled girl.”
“Oh, don’t rub it in so hard, Jim. Don’t, don’t,” said Penelope.
“Well, tell me all about it.”
She did tell him.
“It was Nesta—we had a bet—it was about Clay and that horrid St. Just girl. We made a bet that if Clay got an introduction through Marcia Aldworth that Nesta should have a sovereign; but if it was the other way, I was to have the sovereign. I didn’t think about it, for I knew she could never pay it if she lost, but somehow or other it all came about as she wished, and she came tearing over with that horrid friend of hers, Flossie Griffiths, and dashed into the middle of our party. She would speak to me, and she took me away and demanded the money. I did what I could to put her off; but she said she’d go straight to father and tell him before every one that I had made a bet and broken it. So I was desperate; I took the only money I could find. Oh, what am I to do; what am I to do? Do you think father will be frightfully angry?”
“I expect he won’t much like it.”
“Oh, Jim, what am I to do?”
“I’ll see about it,” said Jim. “Now, look here, Pen, I’m not going to let you off altogether; it would not be right; but you are a good, brave child to have told me, and I am glad to know: You might have done worse, and you might have done better. I didn’t know that a sister of mine could be bullied by that sort of girl. I should like to give that Nesta a piece of my mind. I vow I should.”
“But what will father say on Saturday?”
“You’ll have to own up. I could give you the sovereign, of course, and you could put it back into his purse, but that wouldn’t teach you a lesson. We fellows at school—we boys, wouldn’t do a thing of that sort, and it wouldn’t be straight for me to shield you, and let you put the money back without telling him anything about it. But I’ll help you to tell father. Now, you can go straight off to bed. I’ll help you, old girl, when you are telling him. Good-night, good-night.”
“You are a brick! You are a dear,” said Pen. She crushed her face against his cheek; he felt her tears and rubbed them away shamefacedly afterwards.
For some time he sat on in the little summerhouse in which Angela St. Just had sat when a child, and which had not yet been destroyed for a more elegant and modern edifice. When he went back to the house it was to ponder over many things. Jim was the most thoughtful of the family; he had grit in him, which was more than any of the other Carters, their father excepted, possessed.
Chapter Seventeen.Relief Intercepted.It is an old proverb that man proposes and God disposes. Certainly when Jim Carter went to bed that night he had not the most remote idea of not helping his little sister through her difficulties. But a very unexpected and strange thing happened. His father went up to him in the early hours of the morning and told him that young as he was he was about to send him on a very delicate mission, which no one else could execute so skilfully.“You know, Jim,” he said, “you are older than your years, and you are to leave school next term and enter my business. My clerk, Hanson, who ought to have attended to this business, has absconded, taking some money with him, and I have no one who can fill his place. I want you, my lad, to go over to Paris for me, and to deliver this letter in person to the firm, the address of which you will find on the back. You can talk French nearly as well as a native; you have never been there before, but I want you to catch the very earliest train, the one that leaves Newcastle at half-past six in the morning. You will then be in time to catch the mail to Paris. When you have done my commission, you may go to one of the hotels and amuse yourself for two or three days. You must stay there until I get my answer. I want the thing done privately. It is a very important piece of business, and I cannot attend to it myself, for I am so busy in Newcastle just now that I cannot possibly be spared. But you will do it, Jim, and if you manage it well I won’t forget you, my lad. Here is forty pounds. You won’t spend anything like that in Paris, but you may as well have the money in your pocket as not. You can go first-class, if you please; show yourself a gentleman, and act with discretion. You won’t be questioned with regard to anything, and no one is to know where you are. Now then, up you get, and off you go. Here is my Gladstone bag; I’ll pack your things and see you to the station.”Jim’s heart had jumped into his mouth when his father began to speak, but before it came to an end he was aflame with excitement and delight. Here, truly, was an honour! Penelope and her small troubles were as completely forgotten as though they had never existed. He delighted in the sudden honour thrust upon him; he vowed that he would do it well, if his very life were demanded of him.His quick dressing, his hurried getting downstairs; his father helping him and beseeching him not to make the slightest noise, made it all as mysterious as one of Henty’s adventures. The breakfast which his father himself got for him; the quick walk to the station; the hurried good-bye, when he found himself in a first-class carriage in the train, and his father looking proud and confident, all dazzled his young head, and Penelope and her stolen sovereign were as though they had never been. But when Penelope awoke that morning, the very first person she thought of was Jim. She and Annie shared a room together. Annie was not particularly fond of Penelope; she was the least interesting of the Carter girls; she was a little more commonplace and a little more absorbed in herself than her elder sisters.“There is one thing I’m going to ask father,” said Annie, as they dressed that morning, “that is after we return from the seaside—if I may have a room to myself. I really can’t stand the higgledy-piggledy way you keep your things in, Pen.”“Oh, I hate being tidy!” said Pen. “I wonder where Jim is. Jim is a brick of bricks; the dearest, darlingest, nicest fellow in the world.”“Oh, my word!” cried Annie, “why is Jim in such high favour? I never heard you go into raptures about him before.”“I never found him out until last night,” said Penelope.“And you found him out last night? Pray, in what way,” said Annie.“Ah, that’s a secret,” said Pen. “I’m not going to tell you.”“If there’s a thing in this wide world I’d be deaved to death about, it would be one of your stupid secrets,” said Annie. “Why, you’re nothing but a child; and as to Jim, I don’t believe he has made you his confidante.”“Yes, he has, though; yes, he has,” said Penelope, and she dashed about the room, making the most of what she thought would tease her sister.“You, indeed!” said Annie, as she brushed out her long hair and put it up in the most fashionable style—“you, with your Nesta and your Flossie Griffiths.”“With my what?” said Penelope—“My Flossie?”“Yes, with that common girl. Half of us saw you yesterday, walking with Nesta. Really, it is too bad of her to come on our festive occasions in such a shabby dress.”“Well, that has nothing to do with Jim. Now, I’m going down to breakfast,” said Pen.But she felt a little nervous as she entered the breakfast room. Jim had given her to understand that he would meet her there, and before the rest of the party came down, he would get her to confide in their father. But Mr Carter, more red than usual in the face, and slightly disturbed in his mind, for he wondered if he had done right to put such confidence in his young son, was sitting alone at the breakfast table. He shouted to Penelope when he saw her.“Come along, Lazybones, and pour out my coffee for me.”She obeyed; then she said, looking up and speaking, in spite of herself, a trifle uneasily:“Where’s Jim?”“What do you want to know about Jim?” said her father, in some irritation. He had dreaded this inquiry, but had not thought it would come from little Shallow-pates, as he called his youngest daughter. However, he must account for Jim’s absence in some sort of fashion.“You won’t see Jim for two or three days,” he said. “Not for two or three days,” said Penelope, and her small, round childish face looked almost haggard. “You mean that he won’t be home before Saturday?”“Bless you, no; he’ll certainly be away till then. Now that’s all about it. Why, good gracious, child; I didn’t know you cared so much for him!”She turned away to choke down the lump in her throat. The other girls came in but they did not even trouble to inquire for their brother. Mr Carter, however, thought it best to make his communication.“Jim has gone to stay with one of his schoolfellows unexpectedly; a letter came for him last night. I thought it best he should accept. It is one of the Holroyds. Very respectable people the Holroyds are. Well, girls, what are you staring at?”“I didn’t know we were staring,” said Clara. “I’m very glad Jim has gone. But what a violent hurry he went off in.”“Well, that’s his affair, I suppose. Boys like your brother don’t want the grass to grow under their feet. Anyhow, he’s off, and he won’t be back,”—Pen raised her face—“for a week or ten days; so you’ll have to do without him at the seaside for a few days.”Pen slowly left the room.“I don’t believe he has gone to the Holroyds’,” she said. She mounted the stairs and entered her brother’s bedroom. She opened the drawers and peeped into his wardrobe.“He has not taken his best clothes,” she thought, “and if the Holroyds are swells, he’d want them. He hasn’t gone to the Holroyds! Whatever is the matter?”Then she sat down very moodily on a chair in the centre of the room.“He promised he’d help me, and he hasn’t. He has forgotten all about it, and he has gone away, and it’s not to the Holroyds. He won’t be back before Saturday, and whatever, whatever am I to do?”Penelope was not left long to her own meditations. She was called downstairs by Clara, who gave the little girl several commissions to do for her.“You have got to drive into Newcastle; the pony trap will be at the door in a quarter of an hour’s time. You have got to get all these things at Johnson’s, and then you are to go to Taylor’s and ask them for my new things, and be sure you see that they have selected the right shade of blue for my ties. Then do—”Here Clay thrust a long list of commissions into her sister’s hand.“All right,” said Penelope.“Be home as quick as ever you can; we are expecting some people here this afternoon, the Mauleverers and the Chelmsfords. It seems to me that we are getting to know all the county set. Go, the very last thing, to Theodor’s and get the ices and the cakes that I ordered. Now, do look sharp, Pen. You have no time to lose.”Pen was quite agreeable. There was nothing to pay, for the Carters had accounts at the different shops where she was going. Just for the minute she looked wistfully into her sister’s face.“If I could but tell her,” she thought. “But I don’t suppose she’d understand. Well, I suppose if Jim doesn’t come back, and there’s no hope of that, and if he quite forgets to write, I’ll have to confide in Clay before Saturday, for I couldn’t face father if he found out without my telling him.”Penelope thought and thought during her drive. All of a sudden it flashed upon her that she might write a note to Jim. She could go to the post office—or still better she could stop at the Aldworths’ on her way back, and ask for writing materials, and send a letter to him at the Holroyds’. The Holroyds did not live so very far away, only twenty miles at the furthest. Jim would probably get his letter that night; he would be certain to receive it the first thing in the morning.Pen felt quite happy when she remembered this very easy way of reminding Jim of his promise. She knew the Holroyds’ address quite well, for Jim had often spoken of it. There was George, and there was Tom, and they lived at a place called The Chase. Yes, she could easily get a letter to reach Jim at that address.Accordingly she went through her commissions with ease and despatch, for she had, notwithstanding her youth, a wise little head on her shoulders. Then she desired the coachman to drive rapidly to the Aldworths’ house.Just at that moment a voice sounded on her ears, and looking round she saw Flossie Griffiths.“Stop! stop! Pen! Do stop!” called out Flossie. Pen did not like being called by her Christian name by Flossie Griffiths; still less did she wish to have anything to do with that young lady, but she did not well know how to get rid of her. She accordingly desired the man to draw up the little carriage at the kerbstone, whereupon Flossie said eagerly:“Oh, you are the very person—you are driving past the Aldworths’, aren’t you?”“Yes; have you a message for them?”“I want to go with you. I want to see Nesta in a very great hurry. It is most important.”“All right, if you must,” said Pen not too cordially. Flossie’s nature was far too blunt to be easily repressed. She jumped into the carriage and sat down, leaning back and feeling herself very important.“It must be nice to be rich,” she said. “I do envy folks with lots of money. I wish my father had made his pile the same as yours has. Oh, isn’t it good to lie back against these soft cushions, instead of tramping and tramping on the hard road? Well, I’m going to have a jolly time at Scarborough. Are you going to the seaside, too?”“Yes,” said Pen, “we are going to Whitby.”“I’d much rather go to Scarborough; I went to Whitby once; it isn’t half as jolly.”“Well, I like Whitby,” said Pen, absolutely indifferent.“You don’t know what fun I’m going to have, and there’s a great secret, too,” said Flossie. “Oh, by the way, it was good of you to give Nesta that sovereign. She was nearly mad about it. I never saw anybody in such a fix. But when you had given it to her she got into the best of humours. We had a right good time at the pastrycook’s, I can tell you. I never ate so many light cakes in the whole course of my life before. And we are going to have more fun, Nesta and I. By the way, I hope you’re not jealous.”“Jealous!” said Pen. “What about?”“Of me and Nesta.”Flossie giggled.“No; I’m not jealous,” said Pen. “I don’t quite understand.”“I should think it was pretty easy to understand. Nesta and me—we’ve always been the primest friends—no husband and wife could love each other better than we do. But then you stepped in, and for a time I thought there was going to be a rift in the lute,”—Flossie was very fond of mixed metaphors,—“I really thought there was; but when Nesta saw us both in our true lights, she, of course, would never give me up just because you are the richest.”“I should hope not,” said Pen. “It would be contemptible. But here we are at the Aldworths’. I am going in too.”“Are you? You don’t want Nesta, I hope?”“No; I don’t care who I see. I just want a sheet of paper and a pen and some ink. I have a stamp in my pocket.”“Well, come along; I know the way better than you do,” said Flossie.They went up to the front entrance, and Flossie rang the bell. Then she pressed her face against the glass of the side window.“Oh, dear,” she said, “I see that dreadful, stately old-maidish Miss Aldworth coming downstairs. Don’t let her see me. Just let me hide behind you. There, that’s better.”Pen stood back a little stiffly. Presently the door was opened by Marcia herself.“How do you do, Flossie?” she said. “How do you do, Miss Carter?”“I have come,” said Flossie, “to see Nesta. Where is she?”“You cannot see her at present. She is engaged with her mother.”“But mayn’t I just see her for the shortest of minutes?”“I am sorry you cannot. Have you any message for me to take to her?”“No; yes, that is if you are quite sure I can’t see her.”“I am certain on the subject. She is very busy with her mother, and cannot possibly be disturbed until after the midday meal.”“Well, tell her—tell her—oh, no; don’t tell her anything. You may just mention that I called, and, if she is free, I can be in the wood this afternoon.”“Very well; I’ll remember,” said Marcia with a grave smile.Flossie was forced to take her departure, and Penelope, with a sigh of relief, turned to Marcia.“I’d be so awfully obliged to you,” she said. “I know it’s a cool sort of thing to ask, but I want to write a letter—it’s to Jim, my brother. He is staying with people of the name of Holroyd. They’re very nice people; they’re your sort, you know. He has gone off rather suddenly, and there’s something he was going to do for me, and I want to remind him. Do you greatly object to my writing him a little note here?”“Of course not, dear,” said Marcia, in her kindest tone. “Come along into this room. I’ll give you pen, ink, and paper.”She supplied Pen with the necessary materials, and the little girl wrote her note.“My Darling Jim:“Don’t forget father and the big fat purse on Saturday morning. Your loving and distracted Pen.“P.S.—You went off in such a hurry I suppose you forgot, you old darling. But please, please remember your most wildly distracted sister Pen.”This note was put into an envelope, and was addressed to Mr Jim Carter, care of the Holroyds, The Chase, Dewsbury. Pen took out her little purse, which alas! held little or no coins, produced a sticky stamp, put it on the letter, and prepared to leave the house.In the hall she met Marcia.“Is your letter ready?” she said. “I am just going to the post. I’ll post it for you.”“When do you think it will get to Dewsbury?” asked Pen, raising an anxious face.“Oh, that’s no way off; it will get there to-night.”“Thank you, so very, very much.”“Good-bye, dear,” said Marcia. “I don’t seem to know you as well as the others.”“Good-bye. I’m ever so grateful,” said Pen.She wrung Marcia’s hand.“How nice she is. How kind she is—not a bit like the others,” thought the child.Marcia, as she dropped the letter into the post, glanced at the address. She smiled a little and then forgot all about it. Penelope went home in a far happier state of mind. Surely there was deliverance at hand. Jim, if he could not come back, and she did not expect him even for her sake, to leave such wonderfully grand people as the Holroyds, would at least write a long, explanatory letter to his father.
It is an old proverb that man proposes and God disposes. Certainly when Jim Carter went to bed that night he had not the most remote idea of not helping his little sister through her difficulties. But a very unexpected and strange thing happened. His father went up to him in the early hours of the morning and told him that young as he was he was about to send him on a very delicate mission, which no one else could execute so skilfully.
“You know, Jim,” he said, “you are older than your years, and you are to leave school next term and enter my business. My clerk, Hanson, who ought to have attended to this business, has absconded, taking some money with him, and I have no one who can fill his place. I want you, my lad, to go over to Paris for me, and to deliver this letter in person to the firm, the address of which you will find on the back. You can talk French nearly as well as a native; you have never been there before, but I want you to catch the very earliest train, the one that leaves Newcastle at half-past six in the morning. You will then be in time to catch the mail to Paris. When you have done my commission, you may go to one of the hotels and amuse yourself for two or three days. You must stay there until I get my answer. I want the thing done privately. It is a very important piece of business, and I cannot attend to it myself, for I am so busy in Newcastle just now that I cannot possibly be spared. But you will do it, Jim, and if you manage it well I won’t forget you, my lad. Here is forty pounds. You won’t spend anything like that in Paris, but you may as well have the money in your pocket as not. You can go first-class, if you please; show yourself a gentleman, and act with discretion. You won’t be questioned with regard to anything, and no one is to know where you are. Now then, up you get, and off you go. Here is my Gladstone bag; I’ll pack your things and see you to the station.”
Jim’s heart had jumped into his mouth when his father began to speak, but before it came to an end he was aflame with excitement and delight. Here, truly, was an honour! Penelope and her small troubles were as completely forgotten as though they had never existed. He delighted in the sudden honour thrust upon him; he vowed that he would do it well, if his very life were demanded of him.
His quick dressing, his hurried getting downstairs; his father helping him and beseeching him not to make the slightest noise, made it all as mysterious as one of Henty’s adventures. The breakfast which his father himself got for him; the quick walk to the station; the hurried good-bye, when he found himself in a first-class carriage in the train, and his father looking proud and confident, all dazzled his young head, and Penelope and her stolen sovereign were as though they had never been. But when Penelope awoke that morning, the very first person she thought of was Jim. She and Annie shared a room together. Annie was not particularly fond of Penelope; she was the least interesting of the Carter girls; she was a little more commonplace and a little more absorbed in herself than her elder sisters.
“There is one thing I’m going to ask father,” said Annie, as they dressed that morning, “that is after we return from the seaside—if I may have a room to myself. I really can’t stand the higgledy-piggledy way you keep your things in, Pen.”
“Oh, I hate being tidy!” said Pen. “I wonder where Jim is. Jim is a brick of bricks; the dearest, darlingest, nicest fellow in the world.”
“Oh, my word!” cried Annie, “why is Jim in such high favour? I never heard you go into raptures about him before.”
“I never found him out until last night,” said Penelope.
“And you found him out last night? Pray, in what way,” said Annie.
“Ah, that’s a secret,” said Pen. “I’m not going to tell you.”
“If there’s a thing in this wide world I’d be deaved to death about, it would be one of your stupid secrets,” said Annie. “Why, you’re nothing but a child; and as to Jim, I don’t believe he has made you his confidante.”
“Yes, he has, though; yes, he has,” said Penelope, and she dashed about the room, making the most of what she thought would tease her sister.
“You, indeed!” said Annie, as she brushed out her long hair and put it up in the most fashionable style—“you, with your Nesta and your Flossie Griffiths.”
“With my what?” said Penelope—“My Flossie?”
“Yes, with that common girl. Half of us saw you yesterday, walking with Nesta. Really, it is too bad of her to come on our festive occasions in such a shabby dress.”
“Well, that has nothing to do with Jim. Now, I’m going down to breakfast,” said Pen.
But she felt a little nervous as she entered the breakfast room. Jim had given her to understand that he would meet her there, and before the rest of the party came down, he would get her to confide in their father. But Mr Carter, more red than usual in the face, and slightly disturbed in his mind, for he wondered if he had done right to put such confidence in his young son, was sitting alone at the breakfast table. He shouted to Penelope when he saw her.
“Come along, Lazybones, and pour out my coffee for me.”
She obeyed; then she said, looking up and speaking, in spite of herself, a trifle uneasily:
“Where’s Jim?”
“What do you want to know about Jim?” said her father, in some irritation. He had dreaded this inquiry, but had not thought it would come from little Shallow-pates, as he called his youngest daughter. However, he must account for Jim’s absence in some sort of fashion.
“You won’t see Jim for two or three days,” he said. “Not for two or three days,” said Penelope, and her small, round childish face looked almost haggard. “You mean that he won’t be home before Saturday?”
“Bless you, no; he’ll certainly be away till then. Now that’s all about it. Why, good gracious, child; I didn’t know you cared so much for him!”
She turned away to choke down the lump in her throat. The other girls came in but they did not even trouble to inquire for their brother. Mr Carter, however, thought it best to make his communication.
“Jim has gone to stay with one of his schoolfellows unexpectedly; a letter came for him last night. I thought it best he should accept. It is one of the Holroyds. Very respectable people the Holroyds are. Well, girls, what are you staring at?”
“I didn’t know we were staring,” said Clara. “I’m very glad Jim has gone. But what a violent hurry he went off in.”
“Well, that’s his affair, I suppose. Boys like your brother don’t want the grass to grow under their feet. Anyhow, he’s off, and he won’t be back,”—Pen raised her face—“for a week or ten days; so you’ll have to do without him at the seaside for a few days.”
Pen slowly left the room.
“I don’t believe he has gone to the Holroyds’,” she said. She mounted the stairs and entered her brother’s bedroom. She opened the drawers and peeped into his wardrobe.
“He has not taken his best clothes,” she thought, “and if the Holroyds are swells, he’d want them. He hasn’t gone to the Holroyds! Whatever is the matter?”
Then she sat down very moodily on a chair in the centre of the room.
“He promised he’d help me, and he hasn’t. He has forgotten all about it, and he has gone away, and it’s not to the Holroyds. He won’t be back before Saturday, and whatever, whatever am I to do?”
Penelope was not left long to her own meditations. She was called downstairs by Clara, who gave the little girl several commissions to do for her.
“You have got to drive into Newcastle; the pony trap will be at the door in a quarter of an hour’s time. You have got to get all these things at Johnson’s, and then you are to go to Taylor’s and ask them for my new things, and be sure you see that they have selected the right shade of blue for my ties. Then do—”
Here Clay thrust a long list of commissions into her sister’s hand.
“All right,” said Penelope.
“Be home as quick as ever you can; we are expecting some people here this afternoon, the Mauleverers and the Chelmsfords. It seems to me that we are getting to know all the county set. Go, the very last thing, to Theodor’s and get the ices and the cakes that I ordered. Now, do look sharp, Pen. You have no time to lose.”
Pen was quite agreeable. There was nothing to pay, for the Carters had accounts at the different shops where she was going. Just for the minute she looked wistfully into her sister’s face.
“If I could but tell her,” she thought. “But I don’t suppose she’d understand. Well, I suppose if Jim doesn’t come back, and there’s no hope of that, and if he quite forgets to write, I’ll have to confide in Clay before Saturday, for I couldn’t face father if he found out without my telling him.”
Penelope thought and thought during her drive. All of a sudden it flashed upon her that she might write a note to Jim. She could go to the post office—or still better she could stop at the Aldworths’ on her way back, and ask for writing materials, and send a letter to him at the Holroyds’. The Holroyds did not live so very far away, only twenty miles at the furthest. Jim would probably get his letter that night; he would be certain to receive it the first thing in the morning.
Pen felt quite happy when she remembered this very easy way of reminding Jim of his promise. She knew the Holroyds’ address quite well, for Jim had often spoken of it. There was George, and there was Tom, and they lived at a place called The Chase. Yes, she could easily get a letter to reach Jim at that address.
Accordingly she went through her commissions with ease and despatch, for she had, notwithstanding her youth, a wise little head on her shoulders. Then she desired the coachman to drive rapidly to the Aldworths’ house.
Just at that moment a voice sounded on her ears, and looking round she saw Flossie Griffiths.
“Stop! stop! Pen! Do stop!” called out Flossie. Pen did not like being called by her Christian name by Flossie Griffiths; still less did she wish to have anything to do with that young lady, but she did not well know how to get rid of her. She accordingly desired the man to draw up the little carriage at the kerbstone, whereupon Flossie said eagerly:
“Oh, you are the very person—you are driving past the Aldworths’, aren’t you?”
“Yes; have you a message for them?”
“I want to go with you. I want to see Nesta in a very great hurry. It is most important.”
“All right, if you must,” said Pen not too cordially. Flossie’s nature was far too blunt to be easily repressed. She jumped into the carriage and sat down, leaning back and feeling herself very important.
“It must be nice to be rich,” she said. “I do envy folks with lots of money. I wish my father had made his pile the same as yours has. Oh, isn’t it good to lie back against these soft cushions, instead of tramping and tramping on the hard road? Well, I’m going to have a jolly time at Scarborough. Are you going to the seaside, too?”
“Yes,” said Pen, “we are going to Whitby.”
“I’d much rather go to Scarborough; I went to Whitby once; it isn’t half as jolly.”
“Well, I like Whitby,” said Pen, absolutely indifferent.
“You don’t know what fun I’m going to have, and there’s a great secret, too,” said Flossie. “Oh, by the way, it was good of you to give Nesta that sovereign. She was nearly mad about it. I never saw anybody in such a fix. But when you had given it to her she got into the best of humours. We had a right good time at the pastrycook’s, I can tell you. I never ate so many light cakes in the whole course of my life before. And we are going to have more fun, Nesta and I. By the way, I hope you’re not jealous.”
“Jealous!” said Pen. “What about?”
“Of me and Nesta.”
Flossie giggled.
“No; I’m not jealous,” said Pen. “I don’t quite understand.”
“I should think it was pretty easy to understand. Nesta and me—we’ve always been the primest friends—no husband and wife could love each other better than we do. But then you stepped in, and for a time I thought there was going to be a rift in the lute,”—Flossie was very fond of mixed metaphors,—“I really thought there was; but when Nesta saw us both in our true lights, she, of course, would never give me up just because you are the richest.”
“I should hope not,” said Pen. “It would be contemptible. But here we are at the Aldworths’. I am going in too.”
“Are you? You don’t want Nesta, I hope?”
“No; I don’t care who I see. I just want a sheet of paper and a pen and some ink. I have a stamp in my pocket.”
“Well, come along; I know the way better than you do,” said Flossie.
They went up to the front entrance, and Flossie rang the bell. Then she pressed her face against the glass of the side window.
“Oh, dear,” she said, “I see that dreadful, stately old-maidish Miss Aldworth coming downstairs. Don’t let her see me. Just let me hide behind you. There, that’s better.”
Pen stood back a little stiffly. Presently the door was opened by Marcia herself.
“How do you do, Flossie?” she said. “How do you do, Miss Carter?”
“I have come,” said Flossie, “to see Nesta. Where is she?”
“You cannot see her at present. She is engaged with her mother.”
“But mayn’t I just see her for the shortest of minutes?”
“I am sorry you cannot. Have you any message for me to take to her?”
“No; yes, that is if you are quite sure I can’t see her.”
“I am certain on the subject. She is very busy with her mother, and cannot possibly be disturbed until after the midday meal.”
“Well, tell her—tell her—oh, no; don’t tell her anything. You may just mention that I called, and, if she is free, I can be in the wood this afternoon.”
“Very well; I’ll remember,” said Marcia with a grave smile.
Flossie was forced to take her departure, and Penelope, with a sigh of relief, turned to Marcia.
“I’d be so awfully obliged to you,” she said. “I know it’s a cool sort of thing to ask, but I want to write a letter—it’s to Jim, my brother. He is staying with people of the name of Holroyd. They’re very nice people; they’re your sort, you know. He has gone off rather suddenly, and there’s something he was going to do for me, and I want to remind him. Do you greatly object to my writing him a little note here?”
“Of course not, dear,” said Marcia, in her kindest tone. “Come along into this room. I’ll give you pen, ink, and paper.”
She supplied Pen with the necessary materials, and the little girl wrote her note.
“My Darling Jim:
“Don’t forget father and the big fat purse on Saturday morning. Your loving and distracted Pen.
“P.S.—You went off in such a hurry I suppose you forgot, you old darling. But please, please remember your most wildly distracted sister Pen.”
This note was put into an envelope, and was addressed to Mr Jim Carter, care of the Holroyds, The Chase, Dewsbury. Pen took out her little purse, which alas! held little or no coins, produced a sticky stamp, put it on the letter, and prepared to leave the house.
In the hall she met Marcia.
“Is your letter ready?” she said. “I am just going to the post. I’ll post it for you.”
“When do you think it will get to Dewsbury?” asked Pen, raising an anxious face.
“Oh, that’s no way off; it will get there to-night.”
“Thank you, so very, very much.”
“Good-bye, dear,” said Marcia. “I don’t seem to know you as well as the others.”
“Good-bye. I’m ever so grateful,” said Pen.
She wrung Marcia’s hand.
“How nice she is. How kind she is—not a bit like the others,” thought the child.
Marcia, as she dropped the letter into the post, glanced at the address. She smiled a little and then forgot all about it. Penelope went home in a far happier state of mind. Surely there was deliverance at hand. Jim, if he could not come back, and she did not expect him even for her sake, to leave such wonderfully grand people as the Holroyds, would at least write a long, explanatory letter to his father.