Mr. Dale turned and absolutely ran to the shelter of the house, for the wheels were getting near—rumbling, jumping, uncertain. Now the rumbling and the jumping and the uncertainty got into the avenue, and came nearer and nearer; and finally the tumble-down pony cart drew up at the house. The pony printed his uncertain feet awkwardly but firmly on the weed-grown sweep in front of the unpainted hall door, and Miss Tredgold gazed around her.
Miss Tredgold was a very thin, tall woman of about forty-five years of age. She was dressed in the extreme of fashion. She wore a perfectly immaculate traveling dress of dark-gray tweed. It fitted her well-proportioned figure like a glove. She had on a small, very neat black hat, and a spotted veil surrounded her face. She stepped down from the pony cart and looked around her.
“Ah!” she said, seeing Verena, “will you kindly mention to some of the ladies of the family that I have arrived?”
“I think I need not mention it, because we all know,” said Verena. “I am your niece Verena.”
“You!”
Miss Tredgold could throw unutterable scorn into her voice. Verena stepped back, and her pretty face grew first red and then pale. What she would have said next will never be known to history, for at that instant the very good child, Penelope, appeared out of the house.
“Is you my Aunty Sophy?” she said. “How are you, Aunty Sophy? I am very pleased to see you.”
Miss Sophia stared for a moment at Penelope. Penelope was hideously attired, but she was at least clean. The other girls were anyhow. They were disheveled; they wore torn and unsightly skirts; their hair was arranged anyhow or not at all; on more than one face appeared traces of recent acquaintance with the earth in the shape of a tumble. One little girl with very black eyes had an ugly scratch across her left cheek; another girl had the gathers out of her frock, which streamed in the most hopeless fashion on the ground.
“How do you do?” said Aunt Sophia. “Where is your father? Will you have the goodness, little girl, to acquaint your father with the fact that his sister-in-law, Sophia Tredgold, has come?”
“Please come into the house, Aunt Sophy, and I’ll take you to father’s study—so I will,” exclaimed champion Penelope.