he will have received my telegram. We shall sleep at
our new quarters in peace and comfort, and be ready to enjoy ourselves in
the morning."

CHAPTER XIX.

GLENGARRY CAPS.

Penelope drank her vinegar three times a day. She applied herself to this
supposed remedy with a perseverance and good faith worthy of a better
cause. This state of things continued until on a certain night she was
seized with acute pain, and awoke shrieking out the startling words,
"Vinegar! vinegar!" Nurse, who was not in the plot, thought the child was
raving. She scolded Penelope more than pitied her, administered a strong
dose, and, in short, treated her as rather a naughty invalid.

"It's green apples that has done it," said nurse, shaking her head
solemnly, and looking as if she thought Penelope ought certainly to
return to her nursery thraldom.

"I mustn't take so much vinegar," thought the little girl; "but I do hope
that being so ill, and taking the horrid medicine, and being scolded by
the nurse will have made me a bit pale."

She doubtless hoped also that her illness would be reported to Miss
Tredgold, who would send for her in double-quick time; but as Miss
Tredgold was not told, and no one took any notice of Pen's fit of
indigestion, she was forced to try other means to accomplish her darling
desire--for go to the seaside she was determined she would. Of late she
had been reading all the books she could find relating to the sea. She
devoted herself to the subject of shells and seaweeds, and always talked
with admiration of those naughty children who got into mischief on the
sands.

"Lots of them get drownded," she was heard to say to Adelaide. "It is
quite, quite common to be washed up a drownded person by the big waves."

Adelaide did not believe it, but Penelope stuck to her own opinion, and
whenever she found one of her sisters alone and ready to listen to her,
her one invariable remark was:

"Tell me about the sea."

Once it darted into her erratic little head that she would run away, walk
miles and miles, sleep close to the hedges at night, receive drinks of
milk from good-natured cottagers, and finally appear a dusty,
travel-stained, very sick little girl at Aunt Sophia's lodgings at
Easterhaze. But the difficulties in the way of such an undertaking were
beyond even Pen's heroic spirit. Notwithstanding her vinegar and her
suffering, she was still rosy--indeed, her cheeks seemed to get plumper
and rounder than