“Do you think so?” said Miss Unity, who had great faith in Betty’s judgment. “Then it may be a matter of weeks?”
“Or months, Miss,” replied Betty. “It depends on how they sicken.”
“In that case I’ve been thinking,” said Miss Unity timidly, “whether it would be better to put Miss Penelope into the little pink-chintz room.”
“Well, it is more cheerful than the best room, Miss,” said Betty condescendingly, “though it’s small.”
The pink-chintz room was a tiny apartment opening out of Miss Unity’s. She had slept in it herself as a child, and though there was not much pink left in the chintz now, there were still some pictures and small ornaments remaining from that time. It had a pleasant look-out, too, on to the quiet green Close, and was altogether a contrast to the dark sombrely furnished room Pennie had been occupying. So after Betty had scoured and cleaned and aired as much as she thought fit, Pennie and all her small belongings were settled into the pink-chintz roomy and it turned out that her stay there was to be a long one. The news from Easney did not improve. Dickie certainly had the measles, the baby soon followed her example, and shortly afterwards Ambrose took it, so that Nancy and David were the only two down-stairs.
“What a good thing, my dear, that you were here!” said Miss Unity kindly to her guest. Pennie was obliged to answer “Yes” for the sake of politeness, but in truth she thought she would rather risk the measles and be at home.
Nearminster was nice in many ways and Miss Unity was kind, but it was so dreadfully dull as time went on to have no one of her own age to talk to about things. There were the Merridews, but in spite of Miss Unity’s praises Pennie did not like them any better, and had not become more familiar with them. She had certainly plenty of conversation with her godmother, who did her best to sympathise except on the subject of Kettles; but nothing made up for the loss of Nancy and her brothers—not even the long letters which the former sent now and then from Easney, written in a bold sprawling hand, covering three sheets of paper, and a good deal blotted. Here is one of these epistles:—
“My dear Pennie,—Dickie got up and had chicken for dinner to-day, and was very frackshus. Ambrose is in bed still. He has Guy Manring read aloud to him, and he will toss his arms out of bed at the egsiting parts; so mother says she must leave off. David and I have lessons. David said yesterday he would rather have meesles than do his sums, so Miss Grey said he was ungrateful. I never play with the dolls now. If you were here we could play their having meesles, but it is no good alone. Baby had the meesles worst of all. Doctor Banks comes every day. He has a new grey horse. Have you been to see old Nurse lately? and have you seen Kettles? Dickie sends you these sugar kisses she made herself. She burnt her fingers and screamed for nearly an hour.—Your loving sister, Nancy Hawthorne.”
Pennie answered these letters fully, and moreover, in case she might forget anything, she kept a diary, and wrote something in it at the end of each day. Sometimes there was so little to put down that she had to make some reflections, or copy a piece of poetry to fill it up; but it was a comfort to her to think that some day she should read it over with Nancy and Ambrose.
Meanwhile, this visit of Pennie’s, which was to her a kind of exile, was a very different matter to Miss Unity. Day by day Pennie’s comfort, Pennie’s improvement, Pennie’s pleasure filled her thoughts more and more, and it became strange to think of the time when the little pink-chintz room had been empty.