Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England Penelope and the Others; or, A Story of Five Country Children By Amy Walton ________________________________________________________________ This is another story by Amy Walton about life in the English countryside towards the end of the nineteenth century. It is a sequel to "The Hawthorns", except that, for some reason, the name has become "Hawthorne". On the whole the principal dramatis personae, the Hawthorne household, are unchanged. The additions are Miss Barnicroft, an eccentric old lady from the village; Kettles, an impoverished child from Nearminster, the cathedral city close by; Dr Budge, a learned old man in the village, who takes on the grounding of one of the boys in Latin; Mrs Margetts, who had spent her life in the Hawthorne family's employment as a children's nurse; the Dean of the Cathedral and his family, particularly Sabine, who is the same age as Pennie; and Dr Budge's pet Jackdaw. There is no reason why a child of today should not read this story and profit by it. They will perhaps be surprised to find how much more civilised life was a hundred years ago and more, than it is today. NH _____________________________________________________________ PENELOPE AND THE OTHERS; A STORY OF FIVE COUNTRY CHILDREN BY AMY WALTON CHAPTER ONE. PENELOPE'S PLAN. Penelope Hawthorne sat in the school-room window-seat at Easney Vicarage, one afternoon, looking very gravely out at the garden. She had sat there for some time, with her hands in her lap and a little troubled frown on her forehead, and anyone who knew her well would have guessed at once that she was thinking over a "plan." Penelope was just thirteen years old, the eldest of the Hawthorne children, and as she was a thoughtful girl and fond of reading, she often 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.