“Because we are unhappy,” said Patty then. “We haven’t got hard hearts like yours. My heart aches so badly that I can’t sleep at nights for thinking of the lies I’ve told and how wicked I am.”
“Pooh!” said Penelope. “Keep your achy hearts; don’t worrit.”
“But it’s past bearing,” said Briar. “What we feel is remorse. We must tell. The Bible is full of the wickedness of people not confessing their sins. We can’t help ourselves. We are obliged to tell.”
“Just because you have a bit of pain,” said Pen in a tone of deepest contempt. “I suppose you think I never have any pain. Little you know. I have done a lot of wicked things. I consider myself much the most desperate wicked of the family. Your little pains is only pin-pricks compared to mine. It would relieve me to tell, but I love Paulie too much, so I won’t. We have all got to hold our tongues for the present. Now good-night. I am not a mouse, nor a rat, nor a ferret. But I mean what I say. You are not to tell.”
CHAPTER XXVI.
DECEITFUL GIRLS.
Miss Tredgold was dreadfully puzzled to know what to make of the girls. The time was autumn now; all pretense of summer had disappeared. Autumn had arrived and was very windy and wet, and the girls could no longer walk in twos and twos on the pretty lawn. They had to keep to the walks, and even these walks were drenched, as day after day deluges of rain fell from the heavens. The Forest, too, was sodden with the fallen leaves, and even the ponies slipped as they cantered down the glades. Altogether it was a most chilling, disappointing autumn, winter setting in, so to speak, all at once. Verena said she never remembered such an early season of wintry winds and sobbing skies. The flowers disappeared, several of the Forest trees were rooted up in consequence of the terrible gales, and Miss Tredgold said it was scarcely safe for the children to walk there.
“The best cure for weather of this sort,” she said to herself, “is to give the young people plenty to do indoors.”
Accordingly she reorganized lessons in a very brisk and up-to-date fashion. She arranged that a good music-master was to come twice a week from Southampton. Mistresses for languages were also to arrive from the same place. A pretty little pony-cart which she bought for the purpose conveyed these good people to and from Lyndhurst Road station. Besides this, she asked one or two visitors to come and stay in the house, and tried to plan as comfortable and nice a winter as she could. Verena helped her, and the younger girls were pleased and interested; and Pen did what she was told, dashing about here and there, and making suggestions, and trying to make herself as useful as she could.