"I?" said Penelope. "Why should I be? I stay on here all alone. Deborah sometimes stays with me, or sometimes it's Mademoiselle, or sometimes Fraulein. When it's Deborah, I get her to read foolish stories aloud to me by the yard. When it's Mademoiselle, she insists on chattering French to me, and, perforce, I learn a few phrases; and when it's Fraulein, I equally benefit by the German tongue. But you don't suppose it's anything but _triste_." "You must long for the time when you will leave school," said Cara. "It is very selfish of me," she added, "but I have such delightful holidays, and I do look forward to them so. Picture to yourself a great place, and many brothers and sisters and cousins of all sorts and degrees, and uncles and aunts; and father and mother, and grandfather and grandmother; and great-grandfather and great-grandmother; and we take expeditions to one place and another every day; and sometimes great-grandfather hires a hotel by the sea and takes every one of us there for a week. That's my sort of holiday," continued Cara, "and the days fly, and when night comes I am so sleepy that they are all too short. Oh dear! but how I do run on! I am sorry for you, of course, Penelope." "Don't be sorry," said Penelope; "I am not sorry for myself: I don't want the days to fly; for, when I have passed my eighteenth birthday, I must leave here and go somewhere to teach. It entirely depends on what sort of a character Mrs Hazlitt gives me whether I get a good position or not. But, up to the present, I have managed to please her, and I always take the little ones, who will do anything for me, off her hands. By the way, I have promised to play with Juliet and Agnes this evening. They ought to be in bed, but they are sitting up because I have promised them one wild game of hide-and-seek in the garden. I must go and fulfil my promise now." As Penelope spoke, she rose. "She's not so very short, after all," thought Cara. "But how plain she is," thought Mary. "She's wonderfully fair, all things considered," pursued Cara, in her own mind. "She might do--she could never be like Honora, who is ideal-- but she might do." Aloud she said: "You can't go to the children for a minute, or, rather, you had better let Deborah go, and tell them that you will play with them to-morrow night." "What do you mean?" Penelope's dull, pale blue eyes stared with an ugly sort of glimmer. Then they resumed their usual, apathetic expression. "I don't like to break my word to children," she said. Mary jumped up and came towards her. "You know what is happening," she said. "Our wonderful, beautiful tableaux are in danger of coming to grief. They will fall to the ground completely, unless we can get some girl belonging to the school to take the part of Helen." "Well, Nora Beverley refuses; I don't know who else can do it." "You can do it, Penelope." "And you must!" exclaimed Mary. "Deborah, go and tell those silly children to get into bed."