It was very quiet in the house, as Penelope had said. All the quieter because Penelope did not touch the piano. She said she was sure it was out of tune. But the stillness of the house was broken next afternoon, when Mrs. Wheeler Trowbridge and Mrs. Francis Holden came to call.
They had heard the story of the turned-about girls. Hadn’t all Longmeadow heard it in one form or another and nothing lost in the telling? They were very sympathetic with Aunt Eunice and Cousin Penelope, on whom two sly children had played such a disgraceful, downright wicked trick, and they gave them long accounts of how they themselves managed their children, who never were guilty of any naughtiness.
“Cats!” said Penelope after the callers had gone. She was not in the habit of so far losing control of herself as to call people names, but she had neither eaten nor slept as she should in the last hours. “I simply cannot stand these visits of condolence. I’m going to Boston to-morrow for a couple of days. Will you come with me, Mother?”
“I’ve just got home,” Aunt Eunice answered, after a moment. “I don’t think I’ll go jaunting again so soon.”
“You’ll be rather—lonely here, won’t you?” said Penelope. She hesitated a second, then she spoke quickly, and without looking at her mother. “Why don’t you send for that child to make you a little visit? You know you’re dying to see her again.”
They looked at each other, and suddenly Aunt Eunice’s old face, that seemed so soft, was a grim mask of obstinacy.
“No, Penelope,” she said. “She’s not coming into this house on any little visit. She’s had the wrench of leaving here once—and once is enough. She’s got to forget us, and forget The Chimnies. It’s the kindest way.”
“Yes, of course,” Penelope agreed haughtily. “I spoke on impulse—a very foolish impulse.”
Aunt Eunice smiled, but so fleetingly that Penelope, brooding on her own thoughts, never marked it.
Penelope went to the city and was gone a day, and a night, and most of another day. She came home with a lot of boxes. She had done a little shopping, she said. There was much to talk about that night at dinner—relatives that Penelope had seen in Boston, and new things in the shops. Penelope talked quite gayly, perhaps because her seat at table had been changed, and she no longer had to face the mocking eyes of Great-aunt Joanna, who like all Longmeadow, she felt, was laughing at her, and with reason!