By this it will be seen that Pen was quite an ordinary little girl, but she was a girl with a conscience. She had inherited a sturdy sense of honour from her father, who was a good business man, and Pen, had circumstances been different, might have been a good business woman. He had won his present enviable position by the strongest code of honour; he had piled up his gold without injuring any man. To be honest—honest at any cost—was his motto, and he had instilled these ideas into his sons, and had talked about them in the presence of his daughters. The elder girls had never listened, but Pen had. Her conscience now was stirred to its depths. Nothing but fear would have kept her from confessing the truth. She struggled hard with herself for some time.
It was the middle of the day, however, and Nurse Richardson, after many fruitless searches, found Pen just at the time when luncheon was to be served. She pounced upon the little girl, and took her hand somewhat roughly.
“There now,” she said, “a nice state of things you have been and gone and done. I’ve been the whole morning searching for you. Why, Miss Clara said you were that feverish and sore-throaty and head-achy as never was. Why, what has come to you, Miss Pen? What’s wrong?”
Pen sprang from the hammock, ran up to old Richardson, and embraced her.
“I’m not a bit head-achy, nor a bit sore-throaty, nor a bit of anything, but just that I didn’t want to go,” she said.
“And you made up all that story?”
“I’d rather stay with you, nursey,” said Pen, rubbing her cheek against the old woman’s.
Nurse was by no means a strict moralist; she was soothed by Pen’s attitude.
“Then you will come right in and have a beautiful little bit of dinner,” she said. “Roast duck and green peas, and afterwards a plum tart, and cream and peaches.”
Pen was, notwithstanding her perturbation of mind, somewhat hungry.