By eleven o’clock Penelope was off to Lyndhurst Road station. By twelve o’clock she was in charge of a red-faced old lady. In five minutes’ time she was en route for Easterhaze. The old lady, whose name was Mrs. Hungerford, began by considering Pen a plain and ordinary child; but she soon had reason to change her views, for Pen was not exactly plain, and was certainly by no means ordinary. She stared fixedly at the old lady, having deliberately left her own seat and planted herself on the one opposite.
“Vinegar will do it,” she said.
“What are you talking about, child?” asked Mrs. Hungerford.
“You are so red—such a deep red, I mean—much the same as chocolate. Vinegar will do it. Take three small glasses a day, and pay your Betty with vulgar sort of things out of an old bandbox.”
“The unfortunate child is evidently insane,” was Mrs. Hungerford’s thought. She spoke, therefore, in a reassuring way, and tried to look as though she thought Pen’s remarks the most natural in the world.
Pen, however, read through her.
“You don’t believe me,” she said. “Now you listen. I look a pale little girl, don’t I? I am nearly eight years old. I don’t see why a girl of eight is to be trampled on; does you? I wanted to go, and I am going. It’s tum-tum-ache and sore froat and paling cheeks that has done it. If you want to get what you don’t think you will get, remember my words. It’s vinegar does it, but it gives you tum-ache awful.”
The old lady could not help laughing.
“Now, I wonder,” she said, opening a basket of peaches, “whether these will give tum-ache.”
Penelope grinned; she showed a row of pearly teeth.