Mrs Hathaway had not taken her eyes off Penny with a strong expression of disapproval; she evidently thought her a very ill brought-up little girl indeed. Now she turned to Mrs Hawthorne and said:
“I question whether all this reading and study is an advantage to the young folks of the present day. I do not observe that they are more attractive in manner than in the time I remember, when a young lady was thought sufficiently instructed if she could sew her seam and read her Bible.”
She turned to Penny again and continued: “Now, the other day I heard of a society which I think you would do well to join. It is a working society, and the members, who are some of them as young as you are, pledge themselves to work for half an hour every day. At the end of the year their work is sent to the infant Africans, and thus they benefit both themselves and others. Would you like to join it?”
“Oh, no, thank you,” said Penny in a hasty but heartfelt manner.
“Why not?”
“Because I never could fulfil that promise. I shouldn’t like to belong to that society at all. I don’t know the Africans, and if I work, I’d rather work for Mrs Dicks.” Penny spoke so quickly that she was quite out of breath.
“And who, my dear child,” said Mrs Hathaway, surprised at Penny’s vehemence, “is Mrs Dicks?”
She spoke quite kindly, and her face looked softer, so Penny was emboldened to tell her about the whole affair, and how Mrs Dicks was a very nice woman, and had six children to bring up on nothing.
“I wanted to help her out of the charity-box,” concluded Penny, “but there’s scarcely anything in it.”
Mrs Hathaway looked really interested, and Penny began to think her rather a nice old lady after all. After she and her mother left the house she walked along for some time in deep thought.