One of the greatest trials of Penelope's life when she was ten years old was music, and the other, needlework; she could not see any possible use in learning either of them, and none of the arguments put forward by nurse, governess, or mother, made the least impression on her mind. It was especially hard, she thought, that she had to go on with music, because Ralph, her younger brother, had been allowed to leave off. "Won't you have pity on me, and let me leave off too?" she asked her mother one day imploringly. But mother, though she was touched by the pleading face, and though Penelope's music lessons were household afflictions, thought it better to be firm. "You see, darling," she said, "that now you have got on so much further than Ralph it would be a pity to leave off. You have broken the back of it." "Ah, no," sighed poor Penelope, "it's broken the back of me." And then the needlework! Could there be a duller, more unsatisfactory occupation? Particularly if your stitches _would_ always look crooked and straggling, and when the thimble hurt your finger, and the needle got sticky, and the thread broke when you least expected it. It was quite as bad as music in its way. Penelope would sigh wearily over her task, and envy the people in the Waverley novels, who, she felt sure, never sewed seams or had music lessons. For the Waverley novels were Penelope's favourite books, and she asked nothing better than to curl herself up in some corner with one of the volumes, and to be left alone. Then, once plunged into the adventures of "Ivanhoe," or "Quentin Durward," or the hero of "The Talisman," her troubles vanished. She followed her hero in all his varying fortunes, and was present at his side in battle; she saw him struggling against many foes, fighting for the poor and weak, meeting treachery with truth, and falsehood with faithfulness; she heard the clash of his armour, and watched his good sword flash in the air at the tournament; she trembled for him when he was sore wounded, and rejoiced with him when, after many a hard-won fray, he was rewarded by the hand of his lady love. Those were days indeed! There was something quite remarkably flat and stupid in sitting down to hem a pocket-handkerchief when you had just come from the tourney at Ashby de la Zouche, or in playing exercises and scales while you were still wondering whether King Louis the Eleventh _would_ hang the astrologer or not. Penelope loved all her books. She had a shelf of her own in the play-room quite full of them, but the joy and pride of her heart were the Waverley novels, which her father had given her on her last birthday.