She did not take the egg in to show to Miss Charlotte after all. She thought of another plan. She took it in and showed it to Anna, and to the girls, who gazed at it and marvelled at its beauty, but Miss Charlotte was not to see it until it appeared on her plate at tea, with an inscription on it to say whose it was. It hurt Angela very much to deprive poor Fluffikins of her treasure, but, while she was not looking, she slipped another new, warm egg in the nest in its place, and hoped the dear bird would not see through the fraud; and Miss Charlotte did deserve the honour, after all her goodness to Fluff and her mistress; in fact they were pledged to it. Cousin Charlotte could not suppress a slight start of surprise when she saw the black-speckled thing in the egg-cup on her plate; but she was as pleased as the girls could wish when she read, 'My and Fluff's first egg for you,' and assured them, as she ate it under their united gaze, that she had never in her life tasted a better one. Poppy had constituted herself every one's hand-maiden and handy-maiden. If she were allowed to have a duster and dust-brush and help Esther, her cup of joy was full, but she was just as pleased to run to the post, or to the shops, or to help Ephraim gather windfalls in the orchard, dig potatoes, or assist Anna in any way she was allowed to. And now that her parsley bed was really in full growth, in spite of its troubled beginning, she was very full of happy importance. To be asked if she could spare a pennyworth of parsley filled her with pleasure for days. "I never saw anything like it," she would say seriously, shaking her little purse the while. "It only cost me a penny, and I've made fourpence by it already. I wonder every one doesn't grow parsley." "If they did, dear, there would be no one to sell to," Cousin Charlotte explained. Of them all Penelope did least to help. She had her flowers--quite a collection of them now. "But she doesn't do anything with them," complained Esther one day. "They make the house pretty," urged Angela, always ready to defend her room-mate, "and they make our room so sweet and pretty." "But she should try to sell them," argued Esther, "or--or do something. She seems to have forgotten all about helping Cousin Charlotte." "She doesn't get much time," pleaded Angela, "by the time her lessons are done, and her organ lesson, and the practice, and her reading--she always reads for an hour a day, sometimes more. And--and there isn't any one here to sell flowers to--" At that moment Penelope herself dashed in on them, her eyes dancing, her face glowing. "Oh, girls, what _do_ you think?" she cried, as she flung her music-case on to one chair, her hat on another, and herself on a third. "What?" asked Esther, as she picked up the music-case and straightened the cushion it had knocked over. "Oh, _do_ tell, do tell quick," urged Angela.