“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.