Penelope and the Others | Page 2

last the welcome sound came. Nancy was generally the first to announce it, but to-day Pennie was beforehand.
"It's begun, Miss Grey," she exclaimed, starting up so hastily that cotton, scissors, and thimble, all fell on the ground.
"More haste worse speed, Pennie," said Miss Grey. "Now you will have to stay and pick up all those things and put them neatly away."
Poor Pennie gathered up her property as quickly as she could, but the hateful thimble, as if it knew she was in a hurry, rolled into a dark corner and could not be found.
"Oh, does it matter to-day?" she asked pleadingly, as Nancy, Ambrose, and David, having put away their books, rushed headlong past her, and she heard their first yells of delight as they burst into the garden. "I'll find it afterwards--I really will."
But Miss Grey was firm.
"You are too careless, Pennie. I must have it found before you go out."
Pennie groped about the school-room floor, groaning with vexation. The others would be all scattered about, and she would never get them to listen to her plan. What did a stupid thimble matter in comparison? If it were lost for ever, so much the better. Nancy at least might have stayed to help. While she was peering and poking about, and fuming and grumbling, Dickie came into the room ready for the garden, in her round holland pinafore, and grasping a basket and spade.
Dickie, whose real name was Delicia, was only five years old and not yet admitted to the school-room, but she was fond of escaping from the nursery whenever she could and joining the others in their games. She at once cast herself flat on the floor to help in the search, and in this position not only spied the thimble under the fender, but by means of the spade succeeded to her great delight in poking it out.
In another minute she and Pennie were running across the lawn to a part of the garden called the Wilderness, where only Ambrose was to be found soberly digging in his garden, and quite ready for conversation. But Pennie would not unfold the plan unless the others heard it too. David at any rate was sure to be in the barn feeding his rabbits, and perhaps Nancy might be with him. So to the barn they all took their way.
The barn was large and roomy, quite unused except by the children, who kept all their pets and a good deal of what Andrew the gardener called "rubbage" there. At one end the boys had fixed a swing and some rope-ladders, on which they practised all sorts of monkey-like feats. At the other lived David's rabbits in numerous hutches, Ambrose's owl, a jackdaw, a squirrel, and a wonderfully large family of white mice. Besides those captives there were bats which lived free but retired lives high up in the rafters, flapping and whirring about when dusk came on. Pigeons also flew in and out, and pecked at the various morsels of food left about on the ground, so that the barn was a thickly-peopled place, with plenty of noise and flutter, and much coming and going through its wide doors.
When the children entered, Nancy was lazily swinging herself backwards and forwards while she watched David, who moved steadily from hutch to hutch, with a box of bran under one arm and a huge bunch of green meat under the other.
"Come and hear Pennie's plan," said Ambrose; "she won't tell it till you all listen."
"I can't come," said David, "I've got to finish feeding the rabbits, and after that I must do up my pig for the night. There's only just time before tea."
"Why don't you come in and tell it here if you want to?" said Nancy, shoving herself off with her foot. "Look here. Ambrose, I've touched the rafters twice. You couldn't."
It did not seem a very promising moment.
"If I do will you really listen?" said Pennie, sitting down on a packing-case midway between David and Nancy, "because it's an important plan."
David nodded, and Nancy in her wild passage through the air, now high up in the roof, now low down on the floor of the barn, screamed out "All right! Go on." It was not of much consequence, but Pennie felt vexed with her. She might at least have stopped swinging. Turning her full attention therefore on Ambrose and David, whom she hoped to impress, she began:
"It's not exactly a pleasure plan, it's a sort of sacrificing plan, and I want you to help me."
"I don't know a bit what you mean," said Nancy; "but if it isn't pleasant, what's the good of it?"
"It is pleasant," said Pennie hurriedly, for she saw a cold look of disapproval on David's face; "not at first, but afterwards."
"I like a plan