made very good plans for her brothers and sisters' amusement,
partly out of her own head, and partly out of books. But this
particular plan quite puzzled her, for it had nothing to do with
amusement, and she did not at all see how it was to be carried out. Yet
it was much too good to be given up.

The plan was this. To buy a new Chinese mandarin for Miss Unity
Cheffins.

Now Miss Unity was Pennie's godmother, and lived in the Cathedral Close
at Nearminster, which was two miles away from the village of Easney.
Amongst her knick-knacks and treasures there used to be a funny little
china figure called a mandarin which had always stood on her
sitting-room mantel-piece since the children could remember anything.
This had unfortunately been broken by a friend of Pennie's whilst the
two girls were on a visit at Nearminster; and though it had not been her
fault, Pennie felt as if she were responsible for the accident. She
found out that her godmother had a great affection for the queer little
mandarin, and it made her sorry whenever she went to Nearminster to see
his place empty, and to think that he would never nod his head any more.

She felt all the more sorry when one day, in the cupboard by the
fireplace, she caught sight of a little heap of china fragments which
she knew were the remains of the poor mandarin, and saw by the bottle of
cement near that her godmother had been trying vainly to stick him
together. After this she began to wonder whether it would be possible
to replace Miss Unity's favourite. Could she, if she saved all her
money, get another figure exactly like it? Where were such things to be
bought? No doubt in London, where, she had heard her father say, you
could get anything in the world. It would therefore be easy to get
another mandarin so like the first that Miss Unity would hardly know the
difference, and to set it up on the mantel-piece in her room.

Pennie thought and thought, until this beautiful idea grew to perfect
proportions in her mind. She pictured Miss Unity's surprise and
pleasure, and had settled the new mandarin in all his glory at
Nearminster, before one serious drawback occurred to her--want of money.
If she were to save up her money for years, she would not have enough,
for though she did not know the cost of the figure, she had heard it
spoken of as "valuable." What a very long time it would be before
sixpence a week would buy anything you could call "valuable!" Pennie