Penelope and the Others - Amy Walton (best book club books .txt) 📗

as if you had done it," she said. "But I am glad you did not. There were reasons which made me fond of the old mandarin years and years ago. I do not think I should like to see a new one in his place."

Pennie and she were both silent. Miss Unity's thoughts had perhaps travelled to that far-off country where the mandarin had lived, but Pennie's were nearer home.

"Then," she said half aloud, "I suppose it really would be better to collect for Kettles."

The voice at her side woke Miss Unity from her day-dream. The last word fell on her ear.

"Kettles, my dear!" she said. "What do you want with kettles?"

"It's a person," explained Pennie, "a little girl. We saw her at old Nurse's. And Nancy wants to give her a new pair of boots and stockings."

"Does she live with old Nurse?" asked Miss Unity.

"Oh, no!" answered Pennie. "She only came in for the tea-leaves. She lives in Anchoranopally."

"_Where_?" said Miss Unity in a surprised voice.

"Oh!" cried Pennie with a giggle of amusement, "I forgot you wouldn't understand. Nancy and I always call it that when we talk together. It really is the `Anchor and Hope Alley,' you know, turning out of the High Street close to the College."

Poor Miss Unity became more and more confused every moment. It all sounded puzzling and improper to her. "Kettles" coming in for tea-leaves, and living in "Anchoranopally." How could Pennie have become familiar with such a child?

"But--my dear--" she said faintly. "That's the very worst part of Nearminster. Full of dirty, wicked people. You ought to know nothing of such places. And I don't like to hear you mispronounce words, it might grow into a habit. It's not at all nice."

"We only call it so because Kettles did, you see," said Pennie. "She didn't look at all wicked, and old Nurse says her mother is a decent woman. Her face was rather dirty, perhaps. She's got a bad father. He drinks--like lots of the people at Easney--"

"I am sorry to hear," interrupted Miss Unity, drawing himself up, "that Mrs Margetts allowed you to see such a person at all, or to hear anything of her relations. I am afraid she forgot herself."

"She couldn't help it," said Pennie eagerly. "Nancy and I were at tea with her, and Kettles came in for the tea-leaves, and had some bread and honey. And we asked Nurse to let her come and see us again, and she said `No, she knew her duty better.' So we've never seen her since, but we've always wanted to. Her real name is Keturah. Nurse says it's a Scripture name, but we think Kettles suits her best." Pennie stopped to take breath.

"The dean was saying only the other day," remarked Miss Unity stiffly, "that Anchor and Hope Alley is a scandal to Nearminster. A disgraceful place to be so near the precincts."

"Does he go to see the people in it?" asked Pennie.

"The _dean_, my dear! He has other and far more important matters to attend to. It would be most unsuitable to the dignity of his position."

"I knew Nancy was wrong," said Pennie with some triumph. "She thought he might know Kettles' father and mother, but I was quite sure he didn't. Does anyone go to see them?" she added.

"I have no doubt they are visited by people properly appointed for the purpose," said Miss Unity coldly; "and you see, Pennie, if they are good people they can come to church and enjoy all the church privileges as well as any one else."

Pennie was silent. She could not fancy Kettles coming to church in that battered bonnet and those big boots. What a noise she would make, and how everyone would look at her!

"Father goes to see the bad people in Easney as well as the good ones," she said, more to herself than her godmother. "Lots of them never come to church."

"Easney is quite different from a cathedral town," said Miss Unity with dignity.

And here the conversation ended, partly because Pennie had no answer to make to this statement, and partly because it was time to go to the evening service. It was a special service to-night, for a sermon was to be preached in aid of foreign missions by the Bishop of Karawayo. This was particularly interesting to Miss Unity, and though Pennie did not care about the bishop it was always a great pleasure to her to go to the Cathedral.

"May we go in through the cloisters?" she asked as they crossed the Close.

Miss Unity much preferred entering at the west door and thought the cloisters damp, but she willingly assented, for it was difficult for her to refuse Pennie anything.

There was something about the murky dimness of the cloisters which filled Pennie with a sort of pleasant awe. She shivered a little as she walked through them, not with cold, but because she fancied them thronged with unseen presences. How many, many feet must have trod those ancient flag-stones to have worn them into such waves and hollows. Perhaps they still went hurrying through the cloisters, and that was what made the air feel so thick with mystery, and why she was never inclined to talk while she was there.

Miss Unity always went as swiftly through the cloisters as possible; and Pennie, keeping close to her side, tried as she went along to make out the half-effaced inscriptions at her feet. There was one she liked specially, and always took care not to tread upon:

Jane Lister Deare Childe. Aged 6 Years. 1629.

By degrees she had built up a history about this little girl, and felt that she knew her quite well, so that she was always glad to pass her resting-place and say something to her in her thoughts.

Through a very low-arched doorway--so low that Miss Unity had to bend her head to go under it--they entered the dimly-lighted Cathedral. Only the choir was used for the service, and the great nave, with its solemn marble tombs here and there, was half-dark and deserted. Pillars, shafts, and arches loomed indistinct yet gigantic, and seemed to rise up, up, up, till they were lost in a misty invisible region together with the sounds of the organ and the echoes of the choristers' voices.

The greatness and majesty of it all gave Pennie feelings which she did not understand and could not put into words; they were half pleasure and half pain, and quite prevented the service from being wearisome to her, as it sometimes was at Easney. She had so much to think of here. The Cathedral was so full of great people, from the crusader in his mailed armour and shield, to the mitred bishop with his crozier, lying so quietly on their tombs with such stern peaceful faces.

Pennie knew them all well, and in her own mind she decided that Bishop Jocelyne, who had built the great central tower hundreds of years ago, was a far nicer bishop to look at than the one who was preaching this evening. She tried to pay attention to the sermon, but finding that it was full of curious hard names and a great number of figures, she gave it up and settled comfortably into her corner to think her own thoughts. These proved so interesting that she was startled when she found the service over and Miss Unity groping for her umbrella.

Just outside the Cathedral they were overtaken by Mrs Merridew and her eldest daughter.

"Most interesting, was it not?" she observed to Miss Unity, "and casts quite a new light on the condition of those poor benighted creatures. The bishop is a charming man, full of information. The dean is delighted. He has always been so interested in foreign missions. The children think of having a collecting-box."

"Did you like the sermon, Pennie?" asked Miss Unity as they passed on; "I hope you tried to listen."

"I did--at first," said Pennie, "till all those names came. I liked the hymn," she added.

"Wouldn't it be nice for you to have a collecting-box at home," continued Miss Unity, "like the Merridews, so that you might help these poor people?"

Pennie hung her head. She felt sure she ought to wish to help them, but at the same time she did not want to at all. They lived so far-away, in places with names she could not even pronounce, and they were such utter strangers to her.

"Wouldn't you like it?" repeated her godmother anxiously.

Pennie took courage.

"You see," she said, "I haven't got much money--none of us have. And I know Kettles--at least I've seen her. And I know where Anchor and Hope Alley is, and that makes it so much nicer. And so I'd rather give it to her than to those other people, if you don't mind."

"Of course not, my dear," said Miss Unity. "It is your own money, and you must spend it as you like."

Pennie fancied there was a sound of disapproval in her voice, and in fact Miss Unity was a little disappointed. She had always felt it to be a duty to support missions and to subscribe to missionary societies, to attend meetings, and to make clothes for the native children in India. At that very time she was reading a large thick book about missions, which she had bought at the auction of the Nearminster book club. She read a portion every evening and kept a marker carefully in the place. She was sure that she, as well as the dean, was deeply interested in foreign missions. If she could have made them attractive to Pennie also, it might take the place of Kettles and Anchor and Hope Alley.

For Miss Unity thought this a much more suitable object, and one moreover which could be carried out without any contact with dirt and wickedness! Squalor and the miseries of poverty had always been as closely shut out of her life as they were from the trim prosperity of the precincts, and Miss Unity considered it fitting that they should be so. She knew that these squalid folk were there, close outside; she was quite ready to give other people money to help them, or to subscribe to any fund for their improvement or relief, but it had always seemed to her unbecoming and needless for a lady to know anything about the details of their lives.

The children's idea, therefore, of providing Kettles with new boots and stockings did not commend itself to her in the least. There were proper ways of giving clothes to the poor. If the child's mother was a decent woman, as old Nurse had said, she belonged to a clothing club and could get them for herself. If she was not a respectable person, the less Pennie knew of her the better. At any rate Miss Unity resolved to do her best to discourage the project, and certainly Pennie was not likely to hear much, either at her house or the deanery, to remind her of Anchor and Hope Alley and its unfortunate