But here, perceiving Bentley's face to be screwed up warningly, observing his ponderous wink and eloquent thumb, I glanced up and beheld Penelope herself regarding us from the doorway. And indeed, despite the pucker at her pretty brow, she looked as sweet and fresh and fair as an English summer morning. But Jack, all innocent of her presence, had caught the word from me. "Harsh!" cries he, thumping the table at his elbow, "I'll warrant me I'll be harsh enough--if 'twas only on account of the fellow's poetry-stuff--the jade! We'll lock her up--aye, if need be, we'll starve her on bread and water, we'll--" But he got no further, for Penelope had stolen up behind him and, throwing her arms round his neck, kissed him into staring silence. "Uncle Bentley!" says she, giving him one white hand to kiss, "and you, dear uncle Dick!" and she gave me the other. "What, my pretty lass!" cries Bentley, rising, and would have kissed the red curve of her smiling lips, but she stayed him with an authoritative finger. "Nay, sir," says she, mighty demure, "you know my new rule,--from Monday to Wednesday my hand; from Wednesday to Saturday, my cheek; and on Sunday, my lips--and to-day is Tuesday, sir!" "Drat my memory, so it is!" says Bentley, and kissed her slender fingers obediently, as I did likewise. Hereupon she turns, very high and haughty, to eye Jack slowly from head to foot, and to shake her head at him in dignified rebuke. "As for you, sir," says she, "you stole away my letter,--was that gentle, was it loving, was it kind? Uncle Bentley--say 'No'!" "Why--er--no," stammered Bentley, "but you see, Pen--" "Then, Sir John," she continued, with her calm, reproving gaze still fixed upon her father's face the while he fidgetted in his chair, "then yesterday, Sir John, when I found you'd taken it, and came to demand it back again, you heard me coming and slipped out--through the window, and hid yourself--in the stables, and rode away without even stopping to put on your riding-boots, and--in that terrible old hat! Was that behaving like a dignified, middle-aged gentleman and Justice of the Peace, sir? Uncle Richard, say 'Certainly not!'" "Well, I--I suppose 'twas not," says I, "but under the circumstances--" "And now I find you all with your heads very close together, hatching diabolical plots and conspiracies against poor little me--heigho!" "Nay, Penelope," says Jack, beginning to bluster, "we--I say we are determined--" "Oh, Sir John," she sighed, "oh, Sir John Chester, 'tis a shameful thing and most ungallant in a father to run off with his daughter's love-letter. Prithee, where is her love-letter? Give her her love-letter--this moment!" Hereupon Jack must needs produce the letter from his pocket (where he had hidden it) and she (naughty baggage) very ostentatiously set it 'neath the tucker at her bosom. Which done, she nods at each one of us in turn, frowning a little the while.