ted guest.

"I can show her my pig," said David.

"And the rabbits and the jackdaw and the owl," added Ambrose.

"Oh, I don't suppose she'll care at all about such common things as pigs
and rabbits," said Pennie rather scornfully, for the very name of
Ethelwyn had a sort of superior sound.

"Then she'll be a stupid," said Ambrose.

"Owdacious," added David.

"Davie," said Miss Grey, "where did you hear that word?"

"Andrew says it," answered David triumphantly; "he says Antony grows
owdacious."

A lively argument followed, for David could not be brought to understand
for some time why Andrew's expressions were not equally fit for little
boys and gardeners. Ethelwyn was for the time forgotten by everyone
except Pennie, who continued to think about her all that evening.
Indeed, for days afterwards her mind was full of nothing else; she
wondered what she was like, and how she would talk, and she had Ethelwyn
so much on the brain that she could not keep her out of her head even in
lesson time. She came floating across the pages of the History of
England while Pennie was reading aloud, and caused her to make strange
mistakes in the names of the Saxon kings.

"Ethelbert, not Ethelwyn, Pennie," Miss Grey would say for the twentieth
time, and then with a little impatient shake Pennie would wake up from
her day-dreams, and try to fix her mind on the matter in hand. But it
was really difficult, for those kings seemed to follow each other so
fast, and to do so much the same things, and even to have names so much
alike, that it was almost impossible to have clear ideas about them.
Pennie's attention soon wandered away again to a more attractive
subject: Ethelwyn! it was certainly a nice name to have, and seemed to
mean all sorts of interesting things; how small and poor the name of
Pennie sounded after it! shortened to Pen, as it was sometimes, it was
worse still. No doubt Ethelwyn would be pretty. She would have long
yellow hair, Pennie decided, not plaited up in a pig-tail like her own
and Nancy's, but falling over her shoulders in a nice fluffy way like
the Lady Dulcibella's. Pennie often felt sorry that there was no
fluffiness at all about her hair, or that of her brothers and sisters;
their heads all looked so neat and tight, and indeed they could not do
otherwise under Nurse's vigorous treatment, for she went on the
principle that anything rough was untidy. Even Dickie's hair, which
wanted to curl, was stern