A Bevy of Girls

Chapter Fifteen

An Unwelcome Caller

“I wouldn’t go near her now for all the world,” said Flossie, shrinking back. “Oh, my word, Nesta, do get behind this tree. You’re a perfect fright, you know, in your very oldest dress and your face as scarlet as a poppy. As to me – I wish I’d put on my Sunday-go-to-meeting frock; it isn’t as grand as theirs, but at least it has some fashion about it. But I’m in this dreadful old muslin that I’ve had for three years, and have quite outgrown. It’s awful, it really is. We can’t say anything to them to-day, we must go away.”

“Go away?” said Nesta. “That’s not me. If you’re a coward, I’m not. It’s my way to strike when the iron’s hot, I can tell you. I’ll get into a scrape for this when I get home, and if there’s one thing I’ve made up my mind about, it’s this – that I won’t get into a scrape for nothing. No, if you’re frightened, say so, and sit down behind that haycock. Not a soul will see you there, and I’ll walk up just as though I were one of the guests, and shame Penelope and the others into recognising me.”

“Nesta! You haven’t the courage!”

“Courage?” said Nesta, “catch me wanting courage. Stay where you are; I’ll come back to you when I’ve got my yellow-boy. When that’s in my pocket I’ll come back and then you’ll have a good time. Although,” she added reflectively, “I don’t know that you deserve it, for being such an arrant little coward.”

Nesta disappeared; Flossie sat and mopped her face. She was trembling with nervousness. She had never been really at home with the Carters, and she disliked immensely her present position. She wondered, too, why she cared so much for Nesta. There was nothing wonderful about Nesta. But then there was the sovereign, a whole sovereign, capable of being divided into twenty beautiful silver shillings. Flossie’s father was a very well-to-do tradesman, and could and would leave his child well off; but he was careful, and he never allowed her much pocket money. In the whole course of her life she had never possessed more than half-a-crown at a time, and to be able to have eight of those darlings, to feel that she could do what she liked with them, was a dream beyond the dreams of avarice. It is true the money would not be hers; it would be Nesta’s; but Nesta, with all her faults, was generous enough, and Flossie felt that once she had the money and was away with her friend at the seaside they could really have a good time. Flossie was very fond of her food, and she imagined how the money could be spent on little treats – shrimps or doughnuts, and whatever fruit was in season. They could have endless little picnics all to themselves on the sands. It would be a time worth remembering.

Meanwhile where was Nesta? Flossie was afraid at first to venture to look round the other side of the haycock, but after a time, when she had quite cooled down, she did poke her head round. To her astonishment, envy and disgust, she saw that Nesta, in her shabby cotton frock, with her old hat on her head, was calmly walking up and down in the company of Penelope Carter. Penelope and her boy friend, and Nesta, were parading slowly up and down, up and down a corner of one of the lawns.

Penelope did all that an ordinary girl could to get rid of her friend; but Nesta stuck like a leech. At last Penelope was desperate.

“I am awfully sorry, Nesta, but you see we have all our sets marked out, and we – we didn’t invite you to-day. You must be tired, and if you will go into the house, Mrs Johnson will give you a cup of tea.”

“But I’ve brought Flossie, Flossie Griffiths. I cannot leave her out.”

“Take Flossie with you, and both have a cup of tea.”

“I’ll go with pleasure, if you’ll come with me.”

“But I can’t. Do speak for me, Bertie,” she continued, turning to the boy. “Say that I cannot.”

“Miss Penelope is engaged to play a set of tennis with me,” said Bertie Pearson, trembling as he uttered the words, for Nesta’s aggressive manner frightened him.

“She shall have her set with you as soon as I have said what I have come to say. It won’t take long; I can say it if you will come as far as the house with me, Pen. You won’t get rid of me in any other way.”

Penelope fairly stamped her foot.

“If I must, I must,” she said. “Bertie, keep a set open for me, like a good fellow. Come at once, Nesta.” They turned down a shady walk.

“Oh, Nesta, how could you?” said Penelope, her anger breaking out the moment she found herself alone with her companion. “To come here to-day – to-day of all days, and to look like that, in your very shabbiest!”

“Oh, you’re ashamed of me,” said Nesta. “You’re a nice friend!”

“I am not ashamed of you,” said Penelope stoutly, “when you are fit to be seen. I like you for yourself. I always have; but I don’t think it right for a girl to thrust herself on other girls uninvited. Now, what is it you want? I am busy entertaining friends.”

“Flirting with Bertie, you mean.”

“I don’t flirt – how dare you say so? He is a very nice boy. He is a gentleman, and you are not a lady.”

“Oh, indeed! I’m not a lady. My father’s daughter is not a lady! Wait till I tell that to Marcia.”

Penelope was alarmed. She knew that if this speech reached her father’s ears he would be seriously displeased with her.

“I didn’t mean that, of course, Nesta, you know I didn’t I like you for yourself, and of course you are quite a lady. All the same you oughtn’t to have come here now and – and force yourself on us.”

“Well, I’ll go if you give me what I have come for.”

“What is that?”

They were now approaching the house by a side entrance.

“You needn’t be bothered about your tea, for I don’t want it,” said Nesta. “I’m choking with thirst, but I don’t want your tea – you who have said I’m not a lady. As to Flossie, she doesn’t want your tea either. We’d rather choke than have it. There’s a shop in the High Street where we can get ginger beer and chocolates. The ginger beer will go pop and we’ll enjoy ourselves. It’s fifty times nicer than your horrid tea. But I’ll tell you what I do want – my yellow-boy.”

“Your what?” said Penelope, looking at her in bewilderment.

“My beautiful, precious, darling twenty shillings. Only they must be given me in gold of the realm.”

“Nesta, what do you mean? Your twenty shillings!”

“Come,” said Nesta, “that’s all very fine. But did you, or did you not make a bet with me?”

Penelope seemed to remember. She put her hand to her forehead.

“Oh, that,” she said, with a laugh. “But that was pure nonsense!”

“It was a true bet; you wrote it down in your book and I wrote it down in mine. It’s as true as true can be. You wrote – I remember the words quite well – ‘If Clay gets an introduction through Marcia Aldworth to Miss Angela St. Just, I will pay Nesta one sovereign; and if she fails, Nesta is to give me one sovereign.’ Now did you, or did you not, make me that bet?”

“Oh, it was a bit of fun – a joke.”

“It isn’t a joke; it’s real earnest. I tell you what; I’ll go straight to your father and tell him before every one present what has really happened. I’ll tell him that you made a bet and won’t keep it, for I have won,” said Nesta excitedly. “You ask Clay if I haven’t. Clay was at our house this morning, and Angela called. Blessed thing! I see nothing in her. She was introduced to your Clay, and your Clay hopes to bring her here to Court Prospect, and if I haven’t earned my sovereign, I want to know who has. So now.”

“Really and truly, Nesta, I wish you wouldn’t talk so loud. Oh, look at all those people coming this way. They’ll see us, and Clay will call me. I see Clay with them.”

“Let her call. I’d like her to. I’d like to explain before every one that you never kept your bet.”

“Oh, do come into the house, Nesta. Do for pity’s sake.”

Penelope dragged the fierce and rebellious Nesta into the house by the side door.

“Now,” she said, “sit down and cool yourself. What will Bertie say? and he came here specially on my invitation. He is my guest. I’m awfully sweet on him. I am really, and – oh dear, oh dear – I don’t care about Angela St. Just, and I don’t believe that she was introduced to Clay.”

“Well, you ask Clara. I’ll shout to her – I say, Clara!”

“Stop, Nesta! You must be mad!”

Penelope put her hand over Nesta’s mouth.

“Give me my yellow-boy and I’ll be off,” she said, pushing back Penelope’s hand as she tried to force her from the window.

“I haven’t got it now; I’ll bring it to-morrow.”

“I won’t stir from here till I get it,” said Nesta. “I suppose with all your riches you can raise one sovereign. I want it and I’m not going away without it. Flossie and I are going to have ginger beer and chocolates at Simpson’s, in the High Street, and we’re not going to be docked of our pleasure because you are too fine a lady to care.”

“Oh dear; oh dear!” said Penelope. “What is to be done? I haven’t got the money – I really haven’t.”

“Well, I suppose some of you have. I see your father on the lawn; I’ll run up to him and tell him. If I talk out loud enough he will give it to me. I know he will.”

“Nesta, you are driving me nearly mad!”

“Let me have the money and I’ll go.”

“Pen, Pen! Where are you?” called Mabel’s voice at that moment, from the garden.

“They want me. Bertie will think I’ve deserted him. Oh, Nesta, you are driving me distracted.”

But Nesta stood her ground. Penelope stood and reflected. She had not much money of her own, and what money she got usually melted through her fingers like water. Her sisters had long ago discovered this and entrusted her with but little. Her father always said she could have what she pleased within reason, but he never gave her any sort of allowance.

“Time enough when you are grown up, Pussie,” he used to say, as he pulled her long red-gold hair.

Now she looked out on the sunlit garden; on the pleasant scene, on Bertie’s elegant young figure, on the boys and girls who were disporting themselves in the sunshine and under the trees. Then she glanced at her own really elegant little person, and then at Nesta, untidy, cross, and disagreeable. How could she by any possibility have liked such a girl? She must be got rid of somehow, for there was Mabel’s voice again.

“Stay a minute,” she said to Nesta. “Don’t dare to go out. I’ll get it for you somehow. You are the most horrid girl in the world.”

She flew upstairs; Clara’s door was open; Clara’s room, as usual, was in disorder. Penelope frantically opened drawer after drawer. Could she find a loose sovereign anywhere? Clara often left them about; to her they meant very little. But she could find no loose money in Clara’s room. She went from there to Mabel’s; from Mabel’s to Annie’s. What possessed the girls? There wasn’t even a shilling to be found amongst their possessions. Gold bracelets in plenty, necklaces, jewellery of all sorts, but the blessed money which would restore Penelope to the lawn, to the tennis court, to all her delights, was not forthcoming.

Her father’s room came last. She rushed into it. Nesta was desperate; Nesta might confront her father on the lawn. She would tell him in the evening – he would forgive her. She ran in; she opened one of his drawers and took out a purse which he kept there to pay the men’s wages on Saturday. Invariably each Monday morning he put the required sum into that special old purse. There were twenty sovereigns in it now. Penelope helped herself to one, snapped the purse to, shut the drawer, and ran downstairs.

“There!” she said to Nesta. “Now, for goodness’ sake go. Don’t worry me whatever happens. I’ve given it to you, and I’m free; but catch me ever making a bet with you again.”

“Oh, I don’t care!” said Nesta. “My darling little yellow-boy. Thank you, Penelope, thank you.”

But Penelope had vanished.

Chapter Sixteen

Troublesome Consequences

On the whole Penelope Carter was a fairly good child. She had been very cross when disturbed by Nesta; but when she returned to the lawn her good humour immediately came back. She looked almost pretty, for there was much more character in her face than her sisters’. She ran about now, charming many people by her bright presence, and more than one visitor remarked that Penelope would be the best-looking of the Carters, and certainly had more character in her face than her sisters.

The gay party came to an end, and with it, some of Penelope’s good spirits. When she had taken the sovereign from her father’s purse, she had certainly not had the slightest idea of concealing the fact from him. A sovereign, as she knew, meant but little in that establishment. He would thank her for not allowing that wicked Nesta to disgrace him in public. He would pat her on the cheek and say: “Well done, little woman; I am glad you were good enough to confess!” and there would be an end of the matter.

This was Penelope’s thought in cold blood; but when she reflected more over the matter, it seemed to her that the thing was not so easy as it had appeared when in the heat of the conflict with Nesta she had purloined the money. Mr Carter was very fond of his children; he was a very good-hearted, upright sort of man, ambitious, but without a scrap of taste; thoroughly upright and honest in all his dealings; he did not owe a penny in the world. He had made his money by honest toil, and he was proud of it. To rise in the opinion of the world seemed to him a very laudable thing to do. He hoped to establish his children well in the world. He hoped that his daughters would marry gentlemen, and his sons ladies. He hoped to die in a better position than that in which he was born. For this reason he encouraged the Aldworths, and rather snubbed the Griffiths; and for the same reason he was anxious to become acquainted with the St. Justs, not in a business capacity, but as a friend. He had none of the finer perceptions of character. It never occurred to him that it might be painful to Sir Edward to visit his old home under such changed conditions. On the contrary, he thought how agreeable it would be to show the ex-owner how much better the place looked since Clay had suggested the cutting down of those magnificent trees, and the opening up of that glade. What a beautiful tennis lawn that was, where the ancient garden used to stand. It never occurred to him for a single moment that the bric-à-brac, the beautiful furniture, the old pictures, the old oak which had belonged to the St. Justs, was not more than replaced by the modern splendours of modern and depraved taste. These things he knew nothing about. He was exceedingly anxious to know the St. Justs and their set, and would have given a good deal more than the sovereign which poor Penelope had taken to attain that object.

Nevertheless, Penelope felt that the whole thing had an ugly appearance on the present occasion. The sovereign, however, must be put back in the purse, or the truth confessed before Saturday morning, that was evident. This was Wednesday. There was all Thursday and Friday. There would be a little packing to do – not that Penelope would trouble herself about that – but there would be a little commotion in getting the family off to the sea. Her father was not going with them, at least not for the first few days, but he would follow.

That evening Penelope determined to make a confidante of her sister, Clara.

Clara was in a specially good humour. She had had, as she expressed it, a stunning day, one long series of triumphs, as she said now to her sisters, Mabel and Annie, as they clustered round her.

“Oh, and there’s little Pen,” she cried. “Come along, Penelope. You looked quite nice to-day. You’ll take the shine out of us all when you are grown up. One or two people asked me who you were. Your hair is so pretty, and you will be taller than the rest of us.”

“I don’t care,” said Penelope.

Clara pinched her cheek.

“You don’t care? But you will care fast enough when you are older, and when you have several Berties walking with you, and other fellows anxious to get introductions to you. You wait and see.”

Penelope looked what she felt, cross and discontented.

“What is it, Puss? What are you frowning about?”