Penelope and the Others: Story of Five Country Children

by Amy Walton

“I shouldn’t have minded so much, though,” said Nancy, “if it hadn’t hit anything.”

“I suppose not; and the next time you were vexed you would have been still readier to throw something. Each wrong thing makes it easier to do the next, and sometimes people go on until it comes to be more natural to do wrong than right. But when they find that the wrong-doing gets them into trouble, and gives them pain, they remember to stop in time when they are most tempted. So it is not altogether a pity that the window is broken.”

“There are two panes,” said Nancy, “it’ll take three weeks’ pocket-money. You couldn’t ask Mr Putney to put in very cheap glass, could you, mother?”

Ambrose had listened attentively to all this, though he was apparently deeply engaged in scooping out a boat with his penknife. It brought all his old trouble about the crock back again with redoubled force. He envied Nancy. Her fault was confessed and paid for. What was the loss of three weeks’ money compared with the possession of unlawfully got and hidden treasure? And yet he felt it impossible to tell his mother that he had not only disobeyed her, but persuaded David to do so also. No. The crock must take its chance of discovery. Perhaps in a little while he should be able to forget its existence altogether and be quite happy again.

But it was not easy, and, as if on purpose to prevent it, Pennie’s stories had just now taken the direction of dire and dreadful subjects. They varied a good deal at different times, and depended on the sort of books she could get to read. After a visit to Nearminster, where Miss Unity’s library consisted of rows and rows of solemn old brown volumes, Pennie’s stories were chiefly religious and biographical, taken, with additional touches of her own, from the lives of bygone worthies. When she was at home, where she had read all the books in the school-room over and over again, she had to fall back on her own invention; and then the stories were full of fairies, goblins, dwarfs, and such like fancies. But lately, peering over the shelves in her father’s study, where she was never allowed to touch a book without asking, she had discovered a thick old volume called Hone’s Miscellany. To her great joy she was allowed to look at it, “although,” her father added, “I don’t think even you, Pennie, will find much that is interesting in it.”

Pennie had soon dived into the inmost recesses of the Miscellany, where she found much that was interesting and much that she did not understand. There were all sorts of queer things in it. Anecdotes of celebrated misers, maxims and proverbs, legends and pieces of poetry, receipts for making pickles and jams, all mixed up together, so that you could never tell what you might find on the next page. She thought it a most wonderful and attractive book, and picked out a store of facts and fancies on which to build future stories.

Unfortunately for Ambrose, those which most attracted her were of a dark and grim character. One poem, called “The Dream of Eugene Aram,” So thrilled and excited her that she learned it at once by heart and repeated it to her brothers and sisters. It would have had a great effect upon Ambrose at any time, but just now he saw a dreadful fitness in it to his own secret. Pennie added a moral when she had finished, which really seemed pointed directly at him.

“We learn by this,” she said, “that it is of no use to hide anything, because it is always found out; and that if we do wrong we are sure to be punished.”

Pennie was fond of morals, and they were always listened to with respect, except when they came into Dickie’s stories, who could not bear them, and always knew when they were coming. At the least hint of their approach, however artfully contrived, she would abruptly leave her seat and run away, saying, “No more, no more.” Ambrose, however, was deeply impressed both by the poem and the moral, and felt quite as guilty as Eugene Aram.

True, it was only a crock he had buried, and as far as he knew he had not robbed anyone of the gold, except the ancient Romans, who were all dead long ago. But he began to be troubled with doubts as to whether the coins were really so old. David had said they looked bright and new; perhaps they belonged to someone alive now, who had buried them in Rumborough Camp for safety. If this were so, he and David were robbers! There was no other name for them.