“Guess not,” she said.
The old lady put the basket between Penelope and herself.
“I have also got sandwiches—very nice ones—and little cakes,” she said. “Shall we two have lunch together, even if my face is like chocolate?”
“It’s a beauty face, even if it is, and I love you,” said Penelope. “I think you are quite ’licious. Don’t you like to look like chocolate?”
The old lady made no answer. Penelope dived her fat hand into the basket of peaches and secured the largest and ripest.
“It is the best,” she said. “Perhaps you ought to eat it.”
“I think I ought, but if you don’t agree with me you shall have it.”
Penelope hesitated a moment.
“You wouldn’t say that if you didn’t mean me to eat it,” she said. “Thank you.”
She closed her teeth in the delicious fruit and enjoyed herself vastly. In short, by the time Mrs. Hungerford and her curious charge reached Easterhaze it seemed to them both that they had known each other all their days.