Chapter One.
Penelope’s Plan.
Penelope Hawthorne sat in the school-room window-seat at Easney Vicarage, one afternoon, looking very gravely out at the garden.
She had sat there for some time, with her hands in her lap and a little troubled frown on her forehead, and anyone who knew her well would have guessed at once that she was thinking over a “plan.”
Penelope was just thirteen years old, the eldest of the Hawthorne children, and as she was a thoughtful girl and fond of reading, she often made very good plans for her brothers and sisters’ amusement, partly out of her own head, and partly out of books. But this particular plan quite puzzled her, for it had nothing to do with amusement, and she did not at all see how it was to be carried out. Yet it was much too good to be given up.
The plan was this. To buy a new Chinese mandarin for Miss Unity Cheffins.
Now Miss Unity was Pennie’s godmother, and lived in the Cathedral Close at Nearminster, which was two miles away from the village of Easney. Amongst her knick-knacks and treasures there used to be a funny little china figure called a mandarin which had always stood on her sitting-room mantel-piece since the children could remember anything. This had unfortunately been broken by a friend of Pennie’s whilst the two girls were on a visit at Nearminster; and though it had not been her fault, Pennie felt as if she were responsible for the accident. She found out that her godmother had a great affection for the queer little mandarin, and it made her sorry whenever she went to Nearminster to see his place empty, and to think that he would never nod his head any more.
She felt all the more sorry when one day, in the cupboard by the fireplace, she caught sight of a little heap of china fragments which she knew were the remains of the poor mandarin, and saw by the bottle of cement near that her godmother had been trying vainly to stick him together. After this she began to wonder whether it would be possible to replace Miss Unity’s favourite. Could she, if she saved all her money, get another figure exactly like it? Where were such things to be bought? No doubt in London, where, she had heard her father say, you could get anything in the world. It would therefore be easy to get another mandarin so like the first that Miss Unity would hardly know the difference, and to set it up on the mantel-piece in her room.
Pennie thought and thought, until this beautiful idea grew to perfect proportions in her mind. She pictured Miss Unity’s surprise and pleasure, and had settled the new mandarin in all his glory at Nearminster, before one serious drawback occurred to her—want of money. If she were to save up her money for years, she would not have enough, for though she did not know the cost of the figure, she had heard it spoken of as “valuable.” What a very long time it would be before sixpence a week would buy anything you could call “valuable!” Pennie did not see her way out of it at all, though she worked endless sums on scraps of paper, and worried over it both in play-hours and lesson-time.
This afternoon it was still in her mind when Miss Grey, the governess, came into the school-room with the other children and called her away from the window-seat where she had sat so long. Pennie gave up her thoughts with a sigh and prepared to write out her French translation, while her sister Nancy and her two brothers Ambrose and David were reading history aloud. She gave her task only half her attention, however, and sat staring at the words for some time without thinking of their meaning. It was one of Aesop’s fables that she had to put into French. “Union is strength,” said the motto; and as she read it over for the twentieth time a sudden and splendid idea flashed across her mind.
“Of course!” she exclaimed aloud in triumph.
“Another bad mark, Pennie,” said Miss Grey; for talking in school hours was one of Pennie’s failings.
But she was now so possessed with her new idea and so eager to carry it out, that bad marks did not seem of much consequence. She scrambled through her other lessons, straining her ears all the while for the first tinkle of the four o’clock bell sounding from the village school, for that was the signal that lessons at the rectory were also over for the afternoon. There then remained one precious hour before tea-time, and in summer there was an immediate rush into the garden and fields.
At last the welcome sound came. Nancy was generally the first to announce it, but to-day Pennie was beforehand.
“It’s begun, Miss Grey,” she exclaimed, starting up so hastily that cotton, scissors, and thimble, all fell on the ground.
“More haste worse speed, Pennie,” said Miss Grey. “Now you will have to stay and pick up all those things and put them neatly away.”
Poor Pennie gathered up her property as quickly as she could, but the hateful thimble, as if it knew she was in a hurry, rolled into a dark corner and could not be found.
“Oh, does it matter to-day?” she asked pleadingly, as Nancy, Ambrose, and David, having put away their books, rushed headlong past her, and she heard their first yells of delight as they burst into the garden. “I’ll find it afterwards—I really will.”
But Miss Grey was firm.
“You are too careless, Pennie. I must have it found before you go out.”
Pennie groped about the school-room floor, groaning with vexation. The others would be all scattered about, and she would never get them to listen to her plan. What did a stupid thimble matter in comparison? If it were lost for ever, so much the better. Nancy at least might have stayed to help. While she was peering and poking about, and fuming and grumbling, Dickie came into the room ready for the garden, in her round holland pinafore, and grasping a basket and spade.
Dickie, whose real name was Delicia, was only five years old and not yet admitted to the school-room, but she was fond of escaping from the nursery whenever she could and joining the others in their games. She at once cast herself flat on the floor to help in the search, and in this position not only spied the thimble under the fender, but by means of the spade succeeded to her great delight in poking it out.
In another minute she and Pennie were running across the lawn to a part of the garden called the Wilderness, where only Ambrose was to be found soberly digging in his garden, and quite ready for conversation. But Pennie would not unfold the plan unless the others heard it too. David at any rate was sure to be in the barn feeding his rabbits, and perhaps Nancy might be with him. So to the barn they all took their way.
The barn was large and roomy, quite unused except by the children, who kept all their pets and a good deal of what Andrew the gardener called “rubbage” there. At one end the boys had fixed a swing and some rope-ladders, on which they practised all sorts of monkey-like feats. At the other lived David’s rabbits in numerous hutches, Ambrose’s owl, a jackdaw, a squirrel, and a wonderfully large family of white mice. Besides those captives there were bats which lived free but retired lives high up in the rafters, flapping and whirring about when dusk came on. Pigeons also flew in and out, and pecked at the various morsels of food left about on the ground, so that the barn was a thickly-peopled place, with plenty of noise and flutter, and much coming and going through its wide doors.
When the children entered, Nancy was lazily swinging herself backwards and forwards while she watched David, who moved steadily from hutch to hutch, with a box of bran under one arm and a huge bunch of green meat under the other.
“Come and hear Pennie’s plan,” said Ambrose; “she won’t tell it till you all listen.”
“I can’t come,” said David, “I’ve got to finish feeding the rabbits, and after that I must do up my pig for the night. There’s only just time before tea.”
“Why don’t you come in and tell it here if you want to?” said Nancy, shoving herself off with her foot. “Look here. Ambrose, I’ve touched the rafters twice. You couldn’t.”
It did not seem a very promising moment.
“If I do will you really listen?” said Pennie, sitting down on a packing-case midway between David and Nancy, “because it’s an important plan.”
David nodded, and Nancy in her wild passage through the air, now high up in the roof, now low down on the floor of the barn, screamed out “All right! Go on.” It was not of much consequence, but Pennie felt vexed with her. She might at least have stopped swinging. Turning her full attention therefore on Ambrose and David, whom she hoped to impress, she began:
“It’s not exactly a pleasure plan, it’s a sort of sacrificing plan, and I want you to help me.”
“I don’t know a bit what you mean,” said Nancy; “but if it isn’t pleasant, what’s the good of it?”
“It is pleasant,” said Pennie hurriedly, for she saw a cold look of disapproval on David’s face; “not at first, but afterwards.”
“I like a plan that’s pleasant first, and afterwards, and all the time,” said Nancy, who was now standing still on the swing.
It was worse for Nancy to listen in this mood than to pay no attention.
“I wish you’d go on swinging, Nancy,” said Pennie impatiently, “you only interrupt.”
“Oh, all right!” said Nancy. “I thought you wanted us to listen. I don’t like the beginning at any rate.”
She launched herself into motion again, but Pennie was uneasily conscious that she could still hear every word, and though she explained her plan as well as she could, she felt she was not doing it justice. She got through it, however, without any further interruption.
“Wouldn’t it be nice,” she said after dwelling on Miss Unity’s attachment to the mandarin, “if we all saved up some money and put it into a box, and when we got enough if we all bought a new mandarin, and all gave it her? I wanted to do it by myself, but I never could. It would take too long.”
She looked anxiously at her hearers. No one spoke at first. David seemed entirely occupied in picking out the choicest bits of parsley and carrot for Goliath, his biggest rabbit; but at last he said moodily:
“Ethelwyn broke it.”
“Mean thing!” exclaimed Nancy’s voice on high.
“Yes, I know,” murmured Pennie.
“Then,” continued David, “she ought to pay for a new one. Not us.”
“But she never would,” said Ambrose. “Why, I don’t suppose she even remembers doing it.”
“If there ever was,” put in Nancy, “anyone I hated, it was that stupid Ethelwyn.”
“You oughtn’t to say that, Nancy,” said Pennie reprovingly. “You know mother doesn’t like you to say you hate people.”
“Well, I won’t say so, then; but I did all the same, and so did you at last.”
“Will anyone agree to the plan?” asked Pennie dejectedly, for she felt that the proposal had been a failure. To her surprise David turned round from the row of hutches.
“I will,” he said, “because she was so kind once, but I can’t give it every week. I’ll give it when I don’t want it very much for something else.”
Ambrose remained silent a little while. He was rather vexed that David had made this offer before he had spoken himself, for he did not like his younger brother to take the lead.
“I don’t call that much of a sacrifice,” he said at length. “I shall give some every week.”
Dickie had listened to all this without any clear idea as to what it meant, but she could not bear to be left out of any scheme, and she now said firmly:
“Me will too.”
Her offer was received with laughter.
“You’ve got no pocket-money, Dickie,” said Pennie.
“She’s got her slug-money,” observed David. This property of Dickie’s consisted of the payment for slugs and snails which she collected in a flower-pot and delivered to Andrew for execution. He kept the account chalked up in the potting shed, and when it reached a hundred, Dickie was entitled to ask her father for a penny.
“I call it a shame to take her slug-money,” cried out Nancy from the swing.
“No one wants to take it,” replied Pennie, “but she shall give it if she likes.”
“I call it a stupid old plan, with nothing pleasant about it at all,” were Nancy’s last words as they all left the barn.
Pennie tried to treat those remarks with indifference, but she was in truth wounded and discouraged by them, and felt, moreover, that they were likely to affect the boys unfavourably. She observed that Ambrose became very thoughtful as they approached the house, and presently he asked in an off-hand manner:
“How long do you suppose it will take us to buy a mandarin?”
Pennie could not say, but she thought it might be a long while, because she had heard that china figures of that sort were expensive, “and of course,” she added, “we must get one of the very best.”
“Oh, of course!” said Ambrose at once. But he began to reflect that it would be very dull never to have any pocket-money to spend, and to wish that he had followed David’s prudent example. He could not possibly draw back now, but he hoped the mandarin might not prove quite so expensive as Pennie thought.
Pennie herself hardly knew what to think about the success of her plan. It certainly had not been received very heartily, but there was no reason why it should fail if Ambrose and David would remain true to their promise. That was the question. Much patience and self-denial would be needed, and it was unfortunate that next month there would be a great temptation in the way—Cheddington Fair.
David had only agreed to give his share when he did not want to spend it on anything else. Now even without the attractions of a fair there are plenty of ways of spending 4 pence a week, and though he had a thrifty nature, David had never found any difficulty in laying out his money. Again, Nancy’s behaviour had been most disappointing. She had always been so fond of the old mandarin, who had so often nodded his head for her pleasure, that Pennie had counted on her support, but instead of this she had only displayed a most perverse and provoking spirit.
Pennie sighed to remember all these drawbacks, but she determined not to be beaten without an effort, and directly after tea she set about preparing a box to receive all possible contributions. Would David lend his china cottage for the purpose? This being graciously given she printed the words, “For the Mandarin” in large letters on a piece of paper, pasted it on the front, and set the house up on the school-room mantel-piece that it might be constantly before the general eye.