“Then it was not the Goblin Lady after all.”
“The Goblin Lady! What can the child mean?” said the vicar looking inquiringly at Pennie.
But he got no answer to his question, for Pennie’s long-pent-up feelings burst forth at last. Casting discretion to the winds, she threw her arms vehemently round Ambrose, and blurted out half laughing and half crying:
“I made it up! I made it up! There isn’t any Goblin Lady. Oh, dear! Oh, dear! I made it every bit up!”
The two children sobbed and laughed and kissed each other, and made incoherent exclamations in a way which their puzzled father felt to be most undesirable for an invalid’s room. He had been carefully warned not to excite Ambrose, and what could be worse than this sort of thing?
Perfectly bewildered, he said sternly:
“Pennie, if you don’t command yourself, you must go out of the room. You will make your brother ill. It is most thoughtless of you. Tell me quietly what all this means.”
With many jerks and interruptions, and much shamefacedness Pennie proceeded to do so. Looking up at her father’s face at the end she was much relieved to see a little smile there, though he did not speak at once.
“You’re not angry, are you, father?” said Ambrose doubtfully at last.
“No, I am not angry,” replied Mr Hawthorn, “but I am certainly surprised to find I have two such foolish children. I don’t know who was the sillier—Pennie to make up such nonsense, or Ambrose to believe it. But now I am not going to say anything more, because it is quite time for Ambrose to go to bed, so Pennie and the owl and I will say good-night.”