Girls of the Forest Part 35

She'd like it beyond anything. But, all the same, I don't hold with young ladies forcing their way into my kitchen; it's not haristocratic."

"Never mind that ugly word. Will you do what I want?"

"What is it, Miss Pen?"

"Palefy me. Make me sort of refined. Take the color out of me. Bleach me--that's it. I want to go to the seaside. Pale people go; rosy people don't. I want to be awful pale by to-night. How can it be done? It's more genteel to be pale."

"It is that," said Betty, looking at the rosy Penelope with critical eyes. "I have often fretted over my own color; it's mostly fixed in the nose, too. But I don't know any way to get rid of it."

"Don't you?" said Penelope.

Quick as thought she s.n.a.t.c.hed up the pin-cushion and tidy.

"You don't have these," she said. "Your friend what's going to be married won't have this tidy. If you can't take fixed colors out of me, you don't have fixed colors for your bedroom, so there!"

"You are awful quick and smart, miss, and I have heard tell that vinegar does it."

"Vinegar?"

"I have heard tell, but I have never tried it. You drink it three times a day, a wine-gla.s.s at a time. It's horrid nasty stuff, but if you want to change your complexion you must put up with some sort of inconvenience."

"Suppose, Betty, you and me both drink it. Your nose might get white, and I might go to the seaside."

"No, miss, I'm not tempted to interfere with nature. I've got good 'ealth, and I'll keep it without no vinegar."

"But will you give me some? You shall have the pin-cushion and the tidy if you do."

"'Arriet would like that tidy," contemplated Betty, looking with round eyes at the hideous ornament.

"You sneak round to the boot-house, and I'll have it ready for you," she said. "Come at eleven, come again at half-past three, and come at seven in the evening."

This was arranged, and Pen, faithfully to the minute, did make her appearance in the boot-house. She drank off her first gla.s.s of vinegar with a wry face; but after it was swallowed she began to feel intensely good and pleased with herself.

"Will it pale me in an hour?" was her thought.

She ran upstairs, found a tiny square of looking-gla.s.s, concealed it in her pocket, and came down again. During the remainder of the day she might have been observed at intervals sneaking away by herself, and had any one followed her, that person would have seen her taking the looking-gla.s.s from her pocket and carefully examining her cheeks.

Alas! the vinegar had only produced a slight feeling of discomfort; it had not taken any of the bloom out of the firm, fat cheeks.

"It's horrid, and it's not doing it," thought the child. "I wish I hadn't gived her that tidy and that pin-cushion. But I will go on somehow till the color is out. They will send for me when they hear that I'm bad.

Perhaps I'll look bad to-night."

But Pen's "perhapses" were knocked on the head, for Miss Tredgold made a sudden and most startling announcement.

"Why wait for the morning?" she exclaimed. "We are all packed and ready.

We can easily get to Easterhaze by a late train to-night."

Accordingly, by a late train that evening Miss Tredgold, Verena, and Pauline departed. They drove to Lyndhurst Road, and presently found themselves in a first-cla.s.s carriage being carried rapidly away.

"I am glad I thought of it," said Miss Tredgold, turning to the two girls. "It is true we shall arrive late, but Miss Pinchin will have things ready, as she will have received my telegram. We shall sleep at our new quarters in peace and comfort, and be ready to enjoy ourselves in the morning."

CHAPTER XIX.

GLENGARRY CAPS.

Penelope drank her vinegar three times a day. She applied herself to this supposed remedy with a perseverance and good faith worthy of a better cause. This state of things continued until on a certain night she was seized with acute pain, and awoke shrieking out the startling words, "Vinegar! vinegar!" Nurse, who was not in the plot, thought the child was raving. She scolded Penelope more than pitied her, administered a strong dose, and, in short, treated her as rather a naughty invalid.

"It's green apples that has done it," said nurse, shaking her head solemnly, and looking as if she thought Penelope ought certainly to return to her nursery thraldom.

"I mustn't take so much vinegar," thought the little girl; "but I do hope that being so ill, and taking the horrid medicine, and being scolded by the nurse will have made me a bit pale."

She doubtless hoped also that her illness would be reported to Miss Tredgold, who would send for her in double-quick time; but as Miss Tredgold was not told, and no one took any notice of Pen's fit of indigestion, she was forced to try other means to accomplish her darling desire--for go to the seaside she was determined she would. Of late she had been reading all the books she could find relating to the sea. She devoted herself to the subject of sh.e.l.ls and seaweeds, and always talked with admiration of those naughty children who got into mischief on the sands.

"Lots of them get drownded," she was heard to say to Adelaide. "It is quite, quite common to be washed up a drownded person by the big waves."

Adelaide did not believe it, but Penelope stuck to her own opinion, and whenever she found one of her sisters alone and ready to listen to her, her one invariable remark was:

"Tell me about the sea."

Once it darted into her erratic little head that she would run away, walk miles and miles, sleep close to the hedges at night, receive drinks of milk from good-natured cottagers, and finally appear a dusty, travel-stained, very sick little girl at Aunt Sophia's lodgings at Easterhaze. But the difficulties in the way of such an undertaking were beyond even Pen's heroic spirit. Notwithstanding her vinegar and her suffering, she was still rosy--indeed, her cheeks seemed to get plumper and rounder than ever. She hated to think of the vinegar she had taken in vain; she hated to remember Betty and the tidy and pin-cushion she had given her.

Meanwhile the days pa.s.sed quickly and the invitation she pined for did not come. What was to be done? Suddenly it occurred to her that, if she could only become possessed of certain facts which she now suspected, she might be able to fulfil her own darling desire. For Pen knew more than the other girls supposed. She was very angry with Pauline for not confiding in her on Pauline's birthday, and at night she had managed to keep awake, and had risen softly from her cot and stood in her white night-dress by the window; and from there she had seen three little figures creeping side by side across the lawn--three well-known little figures. She had very nearly shouted after them; she had very nearly pursued them. But all she really did was to creep back into bed and say to herself in a tone of satisfaction:

"Now I knows. Now I will get lots of pennies out of Paulie."

She dropped into the sleep of a happy child almost as she muttered the last words, but in the morning she had not forgotten what she had seen.

On a certain day shortly after Penelope had recovered from her very severe fit of indigestion, she was playing on the lawn, making herself, as was her wont, very troublesome, when Briar, looking up from her new story-book, said in a discontented voice:

"I do wish you would go away, Penelope. You worry me awfully."

Penelope, instead of going away, went and stood in front of her sister.

"Does I?" she said. "Then I am glad."

"You really are a horrid child, Pen. Patty and Adelaide, can you understand why Pen is such a disagreeable child?"

"She is quite the most extraordinary child I ever heard of in the whole course of my life," said Adelaide. "The other night, when she woke up with a pain in her little tum-tum, she shouted, 'Vinegar! vinegar!' She must really have been going off her poor little head."

"No, I wasn't," said Penelope, who turned scarlet and then white. "It was vinegar--real vinegar. It was to pale me."

"Oh, don't talk to her!" said Patty. "She is too silly for anything. Go away, baby, and play with sister Marjorie, and don't talk any more rubbish."

"You call me baby?" said Penelope, coming close to the last speaker, and standing with her arms akimbo. "You call me baby? Then I will ask you a question. Who were the people that walked across the lawn on the night of Paulie's birthday? Who was the three peoples who walked holding each other's hands?--little peoples with short skirts--little peoples about the size of you, maybe; and about the size of Briar, maybe; and about the size of Paulie, maybe. Who was they? You answer me that. They wasn't ghostses, was they?"