The girls now surrounded Penelope, each of them looking at her with fresh eyes. Hitherto, she had been quite unnoticed in the school. She was a nobody—a very plain, uninteresting, badly dressed creature. But now she was to be—in a measure—their deliverer; for they felt certain that under Mrs Hazlitt’s clever manipulations she could be transformed into a Helen of Troy. They all surrounded her eagerly.
“So glad you’ve come!” said Annie Leicester. “Thought you would; of course, you’re going to help us. Oh dear—how much fairer you look than any of the rest of us—you will make a great contrast to the rest of Tennyson’s ‘Fair Women’; won’t she, Mary?”
Mary smiled.
“Penelope will do quite well,” she said. “As Honora has been such a fool as to refuse to play, we must take the second-best. You have thought it all over, haven’t you, Penelope, and you are going to yield?”
“Well,”—said Penelope—“I have thought it over, and I am—”
“Oh, yes—dear creature!” said Cara. “You will yield, won’t you? Say yes, at once—say that you will do what we wish. We can then find Mrs Hazlitt and tell her that her heroines will be forthcoming, and she can go forward with her arrangements. The date is not so very far off now, and of course there will be a great many rehearsals.”
“Five pounds apiece,” murmured Penelope to herself. She looked eagerly from one face to another. She had not been six months at the school without finding out that most of her companions were rich. They could each afford to gratify their special whim, even to the tune of a five-pound note; and even if they did not, why—it didn’t matter: she would not play; the thing would fall to the ground. Of course, they would never repeat what she was going to say—that was the first point she must assure herself of.
“You are going to—yes—why don’t you speak?” enquired Mary.
“Because I have something to say to you,” replied Penelope. “You all want very much to take the different parts of these heroines, don’t you?”
“Why, of course—”