“There, now, Pen, if you want to say anything to father, you can say it yourself; here he is. Father, Penelope wants to speak to you about something.”
“No, I don’t—I don’t,” said Penelope, all her courage oozing out, as she expressed it, at her finger tips.
“Then if Penelope has nothing to say, I have,” said Clara, who being quite selfish and commonplace, forgot the wistfulness which had gathered for a moment round her little sister’s face.
Penelope stole away.
“I’ll tell Clay in the morning,” she said. “Father won’t miss the money before Saturday. I’ll tell old Clay to-morrow.”
Meanwhile Clara poured the welcome news into her father’s ears that the introduction to Miss St. Just had been accomplished. He was quite elated.
“That’s capital,” he said. “We must make much of that girl, the eldest Miss Aldworth. She is worth twenty of her sisters.”
“Of course she is, father; I have always said so.”
“Have you now, Clay? I shouldn’t have guessed it. I thought you were entirely taken up with Miss Ethel and Miss Molly, and that little Nesta. Nesta seems to me to be the best of the bunch—a rollicking little thing, and full of daring. By the way, I saw her here to-day, and our Pen with her. What did she come about?”
“Nesta here to-day? I didn’t see her,” said Clara.