Miss Tredgold, Verena, and Pauline met the train. The girls looked rosy and sunburnt. This was an ideal moment for Penelope. She almost forgot Mrs. Hungerford in her delight at this meeting with her relatives. But suddenly at the last moment she remembered.
“How are you, Aunt Sophy? I am scrumptiously glad to see you. How are you, Verena? How are you, Paulie? Oh! please forgive me; I must say good-bye to the chocolate old lady.”
And the chocolate old lady was hugged and kissed several times, and then Pen was at liberty to enjoy the delights of the seaside.
The lodgings where Miss Tredgold was staying were quite a mile from the station. Pen enjoyed her drive immensely. The look of the broad sea rolling on to the shore had a curious effect upon her strange nature. It touched her indescribably. It filled that scarcely awakened little soul of hers with longings. After all, it might be worth while to be good. She did not know why the sea made her long to be good; nevertheless it did. Her face became really pale.
“Are you tired, dear?” asked Miss Tredgold, noticing the curious look on the expressive little face.
“Oh, no, not that,” replied Pen; “but I have never seen the sea before.”
Miss Tredgold felt that she understood. Pauline also understood. Verena did not think about the matter. It was Verena’s habit to take the sweets of life as they came, to be contented with her lot, to love beauty for its own sake, to keep a calm mind and a calm body through all circumstances. She had accepted the sea as a broad, beautiful fact in her life some weeks ago. She was not prepared for Pen’s emotion, nor did she understand it. She kept saying to herself:
“Nurse is right after all; it was not mere fancy. Little Penelope is not well. A day or two on the sands in this glorious air will soon put her straight.”
Pauline, however, thought that she did understand her little sister. For to Pauline, from the first day she had arrived at Easterhaze, the sea had seemed to cry to her in one incessant, reiterating voice:
“Come, wash and be clean. Come, lave yourself in me, and leave your naughtiness and your deceits and your black, black lies behind.”