Girls of the Forest Part 34

"I see'd such a very funny thing!"

Miss Tredgold was seen approaching. Penelope looked round at her and then deliberately raised her voice.

"I see'd such a very, very funny thing!"

"What is it, Pen? Why are you teasing your sister?" said Miss Tredgold.

"I aren't!" cried Penelope. "I are telling her something what she ought to know. It is about something I---- Shall I go on, Paulie?"

"No; you make my head ache. Aunt Sophy, may I go in and lie down?"

"Certainly, my dear. You look very pale. My poor child, you were over-excited yesterday. This won't do. Penelope, stop teasing your sister, and come for a walk with me. Pauline, go and lie down until dinner-time."

Pauline went slowly in the direction of the house, but fear dogged her footsteps. What did Penelope know, and what did she not know?

Meanwhile Miss Tredgold took the little girl's hand and began to pace up and down.

"I have a great deal to correct in you, Pen," she said. "You are always spying and prying. That is not a nice character for a child."

"I can be useful if I spy and pry," said Penelope.

"My dear, unless you wish to become a female detective, you will be a much greater nuisance than anything else if you go on making mysteries about nothing. I saw that you were tormenting dear little Pauline just now. The child is very nervous. If she is not stronger soon I shall take her to the seaside. She certainly needs a change."

"And me, too?" said Penelope. "I want change awful bad."

"Not a bit of you. I never saw a more ruddy, healthy-looking little girl in the whole course of my life."

"I wonder what I could do to be paled down," thought Penelope to herself; but she did not speak her thought aloud. "I mustn't tell Aunt Sophy, that is plain. I must keep all I know about Paulie dark for the present.

There's an awful lot. There's about the thimble, and--yes, I did see them all three. I'm glad I saw them. I won't tell now, for I'd only be punished; but if I don't tell, and pretend I'm going to, Paulie will have to pay me to keep silent. That will be fun."

The days pa.s.sed, and Pauline continued to look pale, and Miss Tredgold became almost unreasonably anxious about her. Notwithstanding Verena's a.s.surance that Pauline had the sort of complexion that often looked white in summer, the good lady was not rea.s.sured. There was something more than ordinary weakness and pallor about the child. There was an expression in her eyes which kept her kind aunt awake at night.

Now this most excellent woman had never yet allowed the gra.s.s to grow under her feet. She was quick and decisive in all her movements. She was the sort of person who on the field of battle would have gone straight to the front. In the hour of danger she had never been known to lose her head. She therefore lost no time in making arrangements to take Verena and Pauline to the seaside. Accordingly she wrote to a landlady she happened to know, and engaged some remarkably nice rooms at Easterhaze on the south coast. Verena and Pauline were told of her plans exactly a week after the birthday. Pauline had been having bad dreams; she had been haunted by many things. The look of relief on her face, therefore, when Miss Tredgold told her that they were to pack their things that day, and that she, Verena, and herself would start for Easterhaze at an early hour on the following morning, was almost beyond words.

"Why is you giving Pauline this great big treat?" asked Penelope.

"Little girls should be seen and not heard," was Miss Tredgold's remark.

"But this little girl wants to be heard," replied the incorrigible child.

"'Cos she isn't very strong, and 'cos her face is palefied."

"There is no such word as palefied, Penelope."

"I made it. It suits me," said Penelope.

"Pauline's cheeks are rather too pale," answered Miss Tredgold.

She did not reprove Penelope, for in spite of herself she sometimes found a smile coming to her face at the child's extraordinary remarks.

Presently Penelope slipped away. She went thoughtfully across the lawn.

Her head was hanging, and her whole stout little figure testified to the fact that she was meditating.

"Off to the sea!" she muttered softly to herself. "Off to the big briny waves, to the wadings, to the sand castles, to the shrimps, to the hurdy-gurdies, and all 'cos she's palefied. I wish I could be paled."

She ran into the house, rushed through the almost deserted nursery, and startled nurse out of her seven senses with a wild whoop.

"Nursey, how can I be paled down?"

"Nonsense, child! Don't talk rubbish."

"Am I pale, nursey, or am I a rosy sort of little girl?"

"You are a sunburnt, healthy-looking little child, with no beauty to fash about," was nurse's blunt response.

"Am I healthy-looking?"

"Of course you are, Miss Pen. Be thankful to the Almighty for it, and don't worry me."

Pen stuck out her tongue, made a hideous face at nurse, and darted from the room. She stood in the pa.s.sage for a minute or two reflecting, then she slipped round and went in the direction of Pauline's bedroom.

The bandbox chock-full of those vulgar presents had been pushed into the back part of a dark cupboard which stood in the little girl's room.

Penelope knew all about that. She opened the cupboard, disappeared into its shadows, and then returned with an orange-colored tidy and a chocolate-red pin-cus.h.i.+on. Having made a bag of the front of her frock, she slipped the pin-cus.h.i.+on and tidy into it, and ran off to the kitchen.

Aunt Sophia visited the kitchen each morning, but Pen knew that the hour of her daily visit had not yet arrived. Betty was there, surrept.i.tiously reading a copy of the _Faithful Friend_. She started when Pen darted into her domain.

"Now what is it, Miss Penelope? For goodness' sake, miss, get out of this. Your aunt would be flabbergasted to see you here."

For response Pen planted down in front of Betty the orange-colored tidy and the chocolate-red pin-cus.h.i.+on.

"Here's some things," she said. "Here's two nice things for a nice body.

What will that nice body give for these nice things?"

"My word!" said Betty, "they're natty."

She took up the pin-cus.h.i.+on and examined it all over. She then laid it down again. She next took up the tidy, turned it from side to side, and placed it, with a sigh of distinct desire, beside the pin-cus.h.i.+on.

"Them's my taste," she said. "I like those sort of fixed colors. I can't abide the wishy-washy tastes of the present day."

"They's quite beautiful, ain't they?" said Pen. "I'll give them to you if you will----"

"You will give them to me?" said Betty. "But where did you get them from?"

"That don't matter a bit. Don't you ask any questions and you will hear no lies. I will give them to you, and n.o.body and nothing shall ever take them from you again, if you do something for me."

"What's that, Miss Pen?"

"Will you, Betty--will you? And will you be awful quick about it."

"I should like to have them," said Betty. "There's a friend of mine going to commit marriage, and that tidy would suit her down to the ground.