CHAPTER XIX.
GLENGARRY CAPS.
Penelope drank her vinegar three times a day. She applied herself to this supposed remedy with a perseverance and good faith worthy of a better cause. This state of things continued until on a certain night she was seized with acute pain, and awoke shrieking out the startling words, “Vinegar! vinegar!” Nurse, who was not in the plot, thought the child was raving. She scolded Penelope more than pitied her, administered a strong dose, and, in short, treated her as rather a naughty invalid.
“It’s green apples that has done it,” said nurse, shaking her head solemnly, and looking as if she thought Penelope ought certainly to return to her nursery thraldom.
“I mustn’t take so much vinegar,” thought the little girl; “but I do hope that being so ill, and taking the horrid medicine, and being scolded by the nurse will have made me a bit pale.”
She doubtless hoped also that her illness would be reported to Miss Tredgold, who would send for her in double-quick time; but as Miss Tredgold was not told, and no one took any notice of Pen’s fit of indigestion, she was forced to try other means to accomplish her darling desire—for go to the seaside she was determined she would. Of late she had been reading all the books she could find relating to the sea. She devoted herself to the subject of shells and seaweeds, and always talked with admiration of those naughty children who got into mischief on the sands.
“Lots of them get drownded,” she was heard to say to Adelaide. “It is quite, quite common to be washed up a drownded person by the big waves.”
Adelaide did not believe it, but Penelope stuck to her own opinion, and whenever she found one of her sisters alone and ready to listen to her, her one invariable remark was:
“Tell me about the sea.”