Penelope murmured something and then turned to her sister.
“I must get out of this,” she said. “I simply can’t stand their congratulations. I ought never to have done it—I only wish I hadn’t.”
“Well, come with me to the station; I don’t suppose Mrs Hazlitt will mind. You should have worn your Greek costume for the rest of the evening; these people would have gone on admiring you.”
“No, they wouldn’t. Helen with the limelight and the dark wood and the voice talking above her was not me. She was something quite foreign to me: somebody else got into me just for a minute.”
“Oh, how wildly and impossibly you do talk, Penelope! I see you’re going to be queer as well as plain. Well, unless you wish to say good-bye at once, come to the station with me.”
“I will—I should like to,” said Penelope.
She rushed upstairs and came down in her hat and jacket. The same little victoria which had brought Brenda from the station was waiting to convey her back. Penelope was feeling dead tired.
“I shall have a sickening time,” she said, “during the holidays all alone with Mademoiselle in this great place and nothing whatever to do. I don’t love books and I don’t care for work and—oh dear—I envy you; you can go to the seaside and have a good time. I hope you will get use out of your twenty pounds.”
“I should think so, indeed.”
“But you must have spent a lot of it over that dress, and I don’t think I admire it.”