“Pen, Pen! Where are you?” called Mabel’s voice at that moment, from the garden.
“They want me. Bertie will think I’ve deserted him. Oh, Nesta, you are driving me distracted.”
But Nesta stood her ground. Penelope stood and reflected. She had not much money of her own, and what money she got usually melted through her fingers like water. Her sisters had long ago discovered this and entrusted her with but little. Her father always said she could have what she pleased within reason, but he never gave her any sort of allowance.
“Time enough when you are grown up, Pussie,” he used to say, as he pulled her long red-gold hair.
Now she looked out on the sunlit garden; on the pleasant scene, on Bertie’s elegant young figure, on the boys and girls who were disporting themselves in the sunshine and under the trees. Then she glanced at her own really elegant little person, and then at Nesta, untidy, cross, and disagreeable. How could she by any possibility have liked such a girl? She must be got rid of somehow, for there was Mabel’s voice again.
“Stay a minute,” she said to Nesta. “Don’t dare to go out. I’ll get it for you somehow. You are the most horrid girl in the world.”
She flew upstairs; Clara’s door was open; Clara’s room, as usual, was in disorder. Penelope frantically opened drawer after drawer. Could she find a loose sovereign anywhere? Clara often left them about; to her they meant very little. But she could find no loose money in Clara’s room. She went from there to Mabel’s; from Mabel’s to Annie’s. What possessed the girls? There wasn’t even a shilling to be found amongst their possessions. Gold bracelets in plenty, necklaces, jewellery of all sorts, but the blessed money which would restore Penelope to the lawn, to the tennis court, to all her delights, was not forthcoming.
Her father’s room came last. She rushed into it. Nesta was desperate; Nesta might confront her father on the lawn. She would tell him in the evening—he would forgive her. She ran in; she opened one of his drawers and took out a purse which he kept there to pay the men’s wages on Saturday. Invariably each Monday morning he put the required sum into that special old purse. There were twenty sovereigns in it now. Penelope helped herself to one, snapped the purse to, shut the drawer, and ran downstairs.
“There!” she said to Nesta. “Now, for goodness’ sake go. Don’t worry me whatever happens. I’ve given it to you, and I’m free; but catch me ever making a bet with you again.”
“Oh, I don’t care!” said Nesta. “My darling little yellow-boy. Thank you, Penelope, thank you.”