alas!--also its
undoubted drawbacks. She, who hated lessons, must now try to read; she
must also try to write, and must make valiant efforts to spell. Above and
beyond all these things, she had to do one yet harder--she had to sit
mute as a mouse for a couple of hours daily, with her hands neatly folded
in her lap; and by-and-by she had to struggle with her clumsy little
fingers to make hideous noises on the cracked old piano. These things
were not agreeable to the wild child, and so uncomfortable and restrained
had she felt during the first morning's lessons that she almost resolved
to humble her pride and return to the nursery. But the thought of her
sisters' withering, sarcastic remarks, and of nurse's bitterly cold
reception, and nurse's words, "I told you so," being repeated for ever in
her ears, was too much for Penelope, and she determined to give a further
trial to the schoolroom life. Now it occurred to her that a moment of
triumph was before her. In the old days she had secretly adored Nancy
King, for Nancy had given her more than one lollypop; but when Nancy
asked what the nursery child was doing with the schoolroom folk, and
showed that she did not appreciate Penelope's society, the little girl's
heart became full of anger.

"I'll tell about her. I'll get her into trouble. I'll get them all into
trouble," she thought.

She ran into the shrubbery, and stood there thinking for a time. She was
a queer-looking little figure as she stood thus in her short holland
overall, her stout bare legs, brown as berries, slightly apart, her head
thrown back, her hair awry, a smudge on her cheek, her black eyes
twinkling.

"I will do it," she said to herself. "Aunt Sophy shall find out that I am
the good one of the family."

Penelope ran wildly across the shrubbery, invaded the kitchen-garden,
invaded the yard, and presently invaded the house. She found Miss Sophia
sitting by her writing-table. Miss Sophia had a headache; teaching was
not her vocation. She had worked harder that day than ever in her life
before, and she had a great many letters to write.

It was therefore a very busy and a slightly cross person who turned round
and faced Penelope.

"Don't slam the door, Penelope," she said; "and don't run into the room
in that breathless sort of way."

"Well, I thought you ought for to know. I done it 'cos of you."

"'I did it because of you,' you should say."

"I did it because of you. I am very fond of you, aun