s rewarded by the hand of his lady love. Those were days
indeed! There was something quite remarkably flat and stupid in sitting
down to hem a pocket-handkerchief when you had just come from the
tourney at Ashby de la Zouche, or in playing exercises and scales while
you were still wondering whether King Louis the Eleventh _would_ hang
the astrologer or not.

Penelope loved all her books. She had a shelf of her own in the
play-room quite full of them, but the joy and pride of her heart were
the Waverley novels, which her father had given her on her last
birthday.

It was a great temptation to her to spend all her pocket-money in buying
new books, but she knew this would have been selfish, so she had made
the following arrangement. She kept two boxes, one of which she called
her "charity-box," and into this was put the half of any money she had
given to her; this her mother helped her to spend in assisting any poor
people who specially needed it. The money in the other box was saved up
until there was enough to buy a new book, but this did not occur very
often. Penelope liked it all the better when it did, for, though she
could read some stories over and over again with pleasure, they did not
all bear constant study equally well, in some cases, she told her
mother, "it was like trying to dry your face on a wet towel."

One morning Penelope, or "Penny," as she was generally called, was
sitting in the nursery window-seat with a piece of sewing in her hands,
it seemed more tiresome even than usual, for there was no one in the
room but nurse, and she appeared too busy for any conversation. Penny
had tried several subjects, but had received such short absent answers
that she did not feel encouraged to proceed, so there was nothing to
beguile the time, and she frowned a good deal and sighed heavily at
intervals. At last she looked up in despair.

"What _can_ you be doing, nurse?" she said, "and why are you looking at
all those old things of mine and Nancy's?"

Nurse did not answer. She held out a little shrunken flannel dress at
arm's-length between herself and the light and scanned it critically,
then she put it on one side with some other clothes and took up another
garment to examine with equal care. Penny repeated her question, and
this time nurse heard it.

"I'm just looking out some old clothes for poor Mrs Dicks," she said.

"Do you mean _our_ Mrs Dicks?" asked Penny. "What does she want
clothes for?"