“You show it all in your voice, and in your eyes, and in your manner—you’re bitterly ashamed of me!”
“I should be very simple in my dress, if I were in your place,” said Penelope, “that is all.”
“What can be simpler in all the world than sprigged white muslin with blue ribbons and a blue straw hat with blue bows to match? If I could think for ever, I could not imagine anything simpler.”
“But all the blue ribbons—there are such a lot of them, Brenda. With a white hat, it would have been sweet. But, never mind—of course you’re very pretty.”
“Thank you for nothing, my dear—I don’t owe my face to you, and I wouldn’t change it for yours, I can tell you.”
“But tell me what you mean, for indeed, indeed I would help you, in the right way, all I could.”
“I hate that solemn, sanctimonious manner in which you are getting to speak. You used to be such a nice, loving little thing, and for you to reproach me for asking you to struggle to get me a miserable twenty pounds—why, you know I told you that I hoped to be engaged soon. If that comes off—and I see every likelihood of it, for he is very empressé—I shall have as many jewels and dresses and furbelows as your precious Honora, and perhaps more. And I’ll be able to help you, so you’d better not cast me aside.”
“Am I casting you off, Brenda? This is only my second day at Castle Beverley, and you and your pupils are spending it here.”
“Yes, I know that, and I suppose I ought not to complain. But the fact is, it does make me cross to see the difference between this place and the horrid den in which I have to live at Marshlands-on-the-Sea. I shall get Harry—his name is Harry, but you mustn’t breathe it—to buy a castle like this for me to live in when I am married. He can well afford it, for he is a—”
“Is his name Harry?” asked Penelope, impressed by what seemed to her the romance of a real love story.