“Oh, Miss Pen, couldn’t you save me? Won’t you speak for me to Mr Carter? I ain’t done it, Miss. I ain’t done it. I wouldn’t touch what don’t belong to me. He says I’m the only one that could ha’ done it, and if I don’t confess I’m to go, but if I confess he’ll forgive me. But I ain’t done it, and I’ll have to go, and he won’t give me a character, and mother—mother, she’ll never forgive me. She’ll believe as I done it.”
“But—but—” said Pen, bringing out her words with difficulty, “didn’t you take it?”
“Oh, no, Miss Pen. Oh, that you should think that! All my people are as honest as honest can be. I never took it, I never knew anything about that purse, and I never, never opened a drawer in my master’s room, not since I came to the house. But there, I see you don’t believe me.”
Betty did not waste any more time with Pen. She walked on, her sobs grew louder, and then fainter; she was perfectly distracted, she did not know what to do with herself.
Chapter Twenty One.
Nurse Comforter.
When Betty had left her, Pen sat very still in the hammock where she had perched herself. Once or twice she swung herself backwards and forwards, but most times she sat motionless. She had come to the first real grave problem in her young life. She had always been a careless, never-may-care, somewhat untidy, reckless little girl. She had had no special training. Being the youngest she had been petted now and then, and scolded now and then; fussed over occasionally, bullied occasionally; allowed to grow up in any sort of fashion. She had had some sort of teachers, but they had never had much influence over her. Nurse Richardson thought more of her than of all the other girls, for was she not her darling, her baby? Her father, too, was fond of pinching her rosy cheeks, and calling her his little dear, or his little pet, just as fancy took him. Her elder sisters made her their messenger, and partly their slave. She did not mind; she was contented. She had a few friends, but not any very special ones. When Nesta and her sisters had come to stay at Court Prospect during their great trouble, Pen had at first taken warmly to Nesta; but she was tired of her now. She had never liked Flossie Griffiths, and Flossie was really Nesta’s friend.
As to the affair of the sovereign, Pen had made a bet without giving it a serious consideration. She had never for one moment supposed that Nesta considered it a serious affair. Then Pen had begun to long to be grown up like her sisters, to wear dresses which would cover her somewhat ungainly feet, to walk about with boys, and to receive compliments from them; never to do any tiresome French or German, or any unpleasant practising on the school-room piano, or any grammar, or any English history, or any of those things which she called school work, and hated accordingly. She wanted these things to cease, and she hoped to have a right good time when Clay and Mabel and Annie wore getting passée. She considered that Clay would be quite passée when she was one and twenty, and by that time surely Pen, who would be about seventeen, would be in her first charming bloom.