ever. She hated to think of the vinegar she had taken in
vain; she hated to remember Betty and the tidy and pin-cushion she had
given her.

Meanwhile the days passed quickly and the invitation she pined for did
not come. What was to be done? Suddenly it occurred to her that, if she
could only become possessed of certain facts which she now suspected, she
might be able to fulfil her own darling desire. For Pen knew more than
the other girls supposed. She was very angry with Pauline for not
confiding in her on Pauline's birthday, and at night she had managed to
keep awake, and had risen softly from her cot and stood in her white
night-dress by the window; and from there she had seen three little
figures creeping side by side across the lawn--three well-known little
figures. She had very nearly shouted after them; she had very nearly
pursued them. But all she really did was to creep back into bed and say
to herself in a tone of satisfaction:

"Now I knows. Now I will get lots of pennies out of Paulie."

She dropped into the sleep of a happy child almost as she muttered the
last words, but in the morning she had not forgotten what she had seen.

On a certain day shortly after Penelope had recovered from her very
severe fit of indigestion, she was playing on the lawn, making herself,
as was her wont, very troublesome, when Briar, looking up from her new
story-book, said in a discontented voice:

"I do wish you would go away, Penelope. You worry me awfully."

Penelope, instead of going away, went and stood in front of her sister.

"Does I?" she said. "Then I am glad."

"You really are a horrid child, Pen. Patty and Adelaide, can you
understand why Pen is such a disagreeable child?"

"She is quite the most extraordinary child I ever heard of in the whole
course of my life," said Adelaide. "The other night, when she woke up
with a pain in her little tum-tum, she shouted, 'Vinegar! vinegar!' She
must really have been going off her poor little head."

"No, I wasn't," said Penelope, who turned scarlet and then white. "It was
vinegar--real vinegar. It was to pale me."

"Oh, don't talk to her!" said Patty. "She is too silly for anything. Go
away, baby, and play with sister Marjorie, and don't talk any more
rubbish."

"You call me baby?" said Penelope, coming close to the last speaker, and
standing with her arms akimbo. "You call me baby? Then I will ask you a
question. Who were the people that walked across the lawn on