“Bless you, no; he’ll certainly be away till then. Now that’s all about it. Why, good gracious, child; I didn’t know you cared so much for him!”
She turned away to choke down the lump in her throat. The other girls came in but they did not even trouble to inquire for their brother. Mr Carter, however, thought it best to make his communication.
“Jim has gone to stay with one of his schoolfellows unexpectedly; a letter came for him last night. I thought it best he should accept. It is one of the Holroyds. Very respectable people the Holroyds are. Well, girls, what are you staring at?”
“I didn’t know we were staring,” said Clara. “I’m very glad Jim has gone. But what a violent hurry he went off in.”
“Well, that’s his affair, I suppose. Boys like your brother don’t want the grass to grow under their feet. Anyhow, he’s off, and he won’t be back,”—Pen raised her face—“for a week or ten days; so you’ll have to do without him at the seaside for a few days.”
Pen slowly left the room.
“I don’t believe he has gone to the Holroyds’,” she said. She mounted the stairs and entered her brother’s bedroom. She opened the drawers and peeped into his wardrobe.
“He has not taken his best clothes,” she thought, “and if the Holroyds are swells, he’d want them. He hasn’t gone to the Holroyds! Whatever is the matter?”
Then she sat down very moodily on a chair in the centre of the room.
“He promised he’d help me, and he hasn’t. He has forgotten all about it, and he has gone away, and it’s not to the Holroyds. He won’t be back before Saturday, and whatever, whatever am I to do?”