"Here," Pip-Emma said softly.
Clara VanSittart gave one look at the sausage. Then she shut her eyes tight. "Thanks—I guess I won't, though. The others haven't anything."
Pip-Emma looked at the sausage, too. She glanced anxiously at Janet. Janet shook her head. So Pip-Emma tossed the sausage over her shoulder into the forest. It was no good to any of them. One of the twins grinned at her—a friendly, shy sort of grin. And suddenly Pip-Emma was sorry.
She was sorry she'd made old Clara sick before the race. After all, Clara couldn't help being fat and always hungry. She was sorry she'd taken the kids' beads. Prissy was right—the shell trick was just a trick. So it wasn't fair. Prissy was a good guy. She had guts; she could take it.
The twins had put their extra coats over Prissy. There'd been quite a gay argument about it. Now Prissy leaned exhausted with pain against a tree, trying to smile at them.
"It's a real adventure," she said.
They nodded and tried to laugh back at her. All the same they were just kids. They were scared, too, and awfully cold and hungry. They were fighting back tears. Pip-Emma knew. And suddenly Pip-Emma began to sing.
"We are the happy Penguins—
We play without a care . . ."
At first they just gaped at her. They couldn't believe their ears. She'd never sung their songs. She'd made them feel how silly they were. And now suddenly, joyfully, they understood. Pip-Emma was a Penguin. She was one of them. And with a sensation like the breaking of a bad pain Pip-Emma knew, too. They were all her Gang.
The fog-smothered forest rang with their young voices.