“I always did think you a fearfully plain girl, Penelope,” said her sister, “and of course you are plain. But you are mixing in such good society that it is beginning to affect you. You seem to me to have undergone a sort of transformation. You are—of course you’re quite ugly still; but you are—I can’t explain what it is—different from the rest of us.”
“You don’t look too happy, Brenda,” was Penelope’s next remark.
“I happy?” answered Brenda. “Oh—I’m well enough.”
“We’re very happy at the Castle,” continued Penelope. “Honora is so sweet, and all the other children are nice, and—I wish you could know something of our life—it is a little bit higher than this, somehow.”
Brenda kicked a pebble restlessly away with the toe of her smart shoe.
“I am not suited for that sort of life,” she said. “I don’t care for your Castle, but all the same, I think you may as well get me invited there again. What day can we come?”
“I don’t know: how can I get invitations for you?”
“You’ll be perfectly horrid if you don’t—it is your duty to give your own, own sister a good time.”
“Oh, Brenda—if only you’d be different!”
“I don’t want to be different, thank you; I enjoy myself, on the whole, very well.”