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

take us?" said Ambrose; "how awfully kind of you!" He spoke under his breath, for it seemed too good to be true.

"You see," said the doctor, "one good turn deserves another. You and David helped me to find Jack, so it is only fair that I should help you to fill the museum. If we get on well you can open it when your mother comes home, instead of on her birthday. Wouldn't that be a good plan?"

Ambrose hardly knew how he got over the road between the doctor's cottage and the Vicarage that day, he was in such haste to tell the wonderful news to David. They went up after dinner to the deserted museum, and looked at it with fresh interest. It was dim and dusty now, but how different it would be when it was filled with all the really valuable objects they would find with the doctor's help! Did it want any more shelves? they wondered. David had put up so many that there was hardly a bare space left on the walls, and it was decided that for the present no more should be added.

"But I'll tell you what," said David, "we'll get a mop, and a pail, and a scrubbing-brush, and give it a regular good clean out. Then it'll be quite ready."

The afternoon was spent happily in this way, Nancy looking wistfully in at the door and longing to assist. As usual, however, she was not allowed any part in the affairs of the museum, and after a few jeering remarks she went slowly down-stairs.

"It _is_ dull," she said to herself, "now Pennie isn't at home."

Poor Nancy felt this more and more as the days went on. No Pennie, no one in the nursery, and the boys entirely engaged in their new pursuit. It was very dull. She would willingly have taken an interest in the museum too, and when she heard that the boys were to go with the doctor to the chalk-pit, she felt her lot was hard indeed. It was so exactly what she would have liked, and yet because she was a girl she might have no part in it. When they came home, full of importance and triumph, with some ugly-looking stones and some very long names to write on the labels, she followed them into the school-room.

"I wish I could go next time," she said, for the doctor had promised another expedition soon. "I'm sure Dr Budge would like me to, and I could find things every bit as well as you could."

"Dr Budge wouldn't want to teach girls," said David. "He teaches us _jology_. Girls needn't know anything about _jology_."

"I don't want to," said Nancy frankly, "but I should love to go to the chalk-pit with that funny old Dr Budge." "Well," said David decidedly, "you can't have anything to do with the museum. It's always been mine and Ambrose's. If we get a nice lot of things," he added in a satisfied voice, "we mean to open it on the day mother comes back."

"Oh dear me," exclaimed Nancy, "how I wish Saturday would come! Pennie and I shall have lots to talk about then, which you don't know anything about."

For it had been settled that Pennie was to return from Nearminster on Saturday, and Nancy, feeling herself left outside all that was going on, longed eagerly for the day. She would then have someone to talk to all to herself, and there would also be lots to hear about Kettles. Pennie certainly wrote long letters, but Nancy thought them not to be compared to conversations, and she had so many questions to ask that were too small to be written. Above all, there were the boots and stockings to be bought. She would not do this alone, though when she passed the village shop and saw them hanging up it was very hard to help going in. So the time went on, very slowly for Nancy just now, but at last the week ended and Saturday came.


CHAPTER ELEVEN.

KETURAH.

The house at Easney was merrier and more noisy than it had been for some time on the day of Pennie's return, but the house at Nearminster went back at once to its old gravity and silence. Had it always been so still and quiet? Miss Unity wondered. If so, she had never noticed it until Pennie had come and gone. Now it seemed so strange and unaccustomed that it made her quite restless and unable to settle down to her usual morning employments. She tried them one after another in vain. It was of no use. She could neither add up her accounts, nor read her newspaper, nor do her wool-work with the least satisfaction.

Almost without knowing it she went aimlessly into her bed-room, and from there into the little pink-chintz room which had been Pennie's. Betty had already made it so neat and trim that it looked forlornly empty with no signs of its late owner. So Miss Unity thought at first, but glancing round it she saw that careless Pennie had left her thimble on the table, and one of her dancing shoes in a corner.

Miss Unity picked up the thimble and fitted it absently on to the top of her own finger. How Pennie had disliked sewing, and dancing too, and how very very glad she had been to go home that morning! How she had flung herself upon Nancy and smothered her with kisses; how happy and smiling her face had looked as she drove away from the door, talking so eagerly to her sister that she had almost forgotten to wave a last good-bye to Miss Unity at the window.

"Well, it was natural, I would not have it otherwise," said Miss Unity to herself as she finished her reflections; "it is right that the child should love her home best."

But she sighed as she went back to the sitting-room and took up her work again. Opposite to her was the high-backed chair in which Pennie had spent so many weary hours, bending with a frown over Kettles' garments. But the chair was empty, and there was something in the way it stood which so annoyed Miss Unity that she pushed it up against the wall almost impatiently. Then her eye fell on a pile of white clothes neatly folded on a side-table. Pennie had finished them all, and Miss Unity had promised that she and Nancy should come over and present them to Kettles before long. From this her thoughts went on to Kettles herself, and Anchor and Hope Alley. At this moment Betty appeared at the door with a face full of woe.

"I've just had an accident, Miss," she said.

Betty's accidents usually meant broken china, but this time it was something worse. She had sprained her wrist badly.

"You must go at once to the doctor, Betty," said Miss Unity, looking nervously at the swollen member; "and, oh dear me! it's your right one isn't it?"

"Yes, Miss, worse luck," said Betty.

"We must have someone in," continued Miss Unity still more nervously; "you ought not to use it, you know, for a long time."

"I don't want no strangers, Miss," said Betty with a darkening face, "they break more than they make. I can make shift, I daresay, with my left hand."

"Now you know that's quite out of the question, Betty," said her mistress, doing her best to speak severely, "you couldn't lift a saucepan, or even make a bed. You must certainly have someone. Some nice respectable char-woman."

"There's ne'er a one in the town," said Betty, "as you'd like to have in the house. I know what they are--a lazy gossiping set."

Miss Unity rose with decision.

"I shall go and ask Mrs Margetts at the College to tell me of someone trustworthy," she said, "and I do beg, Betty, that you will go at once to the doctor."

But though she spoke with unusual firmness Miss Unity was inwardly very much disturbed, and she quite trembled as she put on her bonnet and started off to see old Nurse. For Betty, like many faithful old servants, was most difficult to manage sometimes. She had ruled Miss Unity's house single-handed so long that she could not endure the idea of help, or "strangers in the kitchen," as she called it. Miss Unity had never dared to suggest such a thing until now, and she felt very doubtful as to its success, for she foresaw little peace in the house for some time to come. Complaints, quarrels, changes, wounded feelings on Betty's part, and so on; a constant worry in the air which would be most distressing to anyone of an orderly and quiet mind. Poor Miss Unity sighed heavily as she reached the College and climbed Nurse's steep staircase.

Nurse was full of sympathy, but before she could bring her mind to the question of charwomen she had to go over all her experience of sprains and what was best for them--how some said this, and some said exactly the opposite, and how she herself, after trying all the remedies, had finally been cured by some stuff which folks called a quack medicine, but she thought none the worse of it for that. Miss Unity sat patiently and politely listening to all this, and at last gently repeated:

"And do you know of a respectable woman, Mrs Margetts, who would come in and help Betty for a time?"

Nurse shook her head. "There's no one, I'm afraid, Miss, not one that Betty would like to have. You see she's rather particular, and if a person isn't _just so_, as one might say, it puts her out."

Miss Unity knew that only too well.

"I must have someone," she said; "you see Betty will be helpless for some time; she can't do much with one hand."

Nurse nodded, and pursed up her lips in deep thought.

"You wouldn't like a little gal, Miss?" she asked suddenly.

"A little girl!" repeated Miss Unity in some dismay.

"I was thinking p'r'aps that it wouldn't put Betty about so much," continued Nurse. "You see she could make a girl do things her way where she couldn't order about a grown woman, and really there's some girls of fourteen or so'll do as much work, and do it most as well with someone to look after 'em."

"But," said Miss Unity, "don't they break things dreadfully?"

Nurse laughed. "Why there's all sorts, Miss," she said. "Some are naturally neat-handed and sharp. It's the dull stupid ones that has the heavy hands in general."

"Well," said Miss Unity hesitatingly, "supposing Betty should like the idea--do you know of one who could come?"

She had a sort of feeling that Nurse was thinking of Kettles, so that her answer was hardly a surprise.

"There's the little girl Miss Pennie was so set on. She could come, for her mother's about again now, and a decent woman she is, though she's so badly off."

A month ago the bare idea of having anyone from Anchor and Hope Alley into her house would have been impossible to Miss Unity; but Pennie had made her so familiar with the name and affairs of