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Dickie immediately cast herself on the top of them with shrieks of delight, while Pennie and Ambrose went quietly on with their occupation in the midst of the uproar as though nothing were happening. "I wonder if the Merridews are nice?" remarked Ambrose; "fancy five girls!" "Only four are going to learn," said Pennie; "Miss Unity told me their names.
What she wants is a refining influence the companionship of some nice, lady-like girls, like the Merridews, instead of romping about so much with her brothers and Nancy, who is quite as bad as a boy. But how to make Mary see it!" Miss Unity sighed heavily when she came to this point. She felt that Pennie's future was in some measure in her hands, and it was a very serious burden.
There was another matter which Pennie had not advanced since her visits to Nearminster, and that was her acquaintance with Kettles. She neither saw nor heard anything of her, which was not surprising, since neither Miss Unity nor the Merridews were likely to know of her existence. To Nancy, however, it seemed absurd that Pennie should go every week to Nearminster and bring back no news at all.
She felt quite sure that the Merridews and all the other children at the class would wear shoes with sandals, and this was a most tormenting thought. She saw a vision of rows of elegantly shod feet, and one shabby misshapen pair amongst them. "I think I want new shoes quite as much as Kettles does," she said one day to Nancy.
I have always said it's for you to judge but I said I would ask you to let the children join. Mr Deville's going to teach them. The Merridews are nice girls, don't you think?" she added wistfully, for she saw no answering approval on Mrs Hawthorne's face. "I knew I should offend Mary," she said to herself.
But if it was a trial to Miss Unity it was none the less so to Pennie, who looked upon herself as a sort of victim chosen out of the family to be sacrificed. She was to go alone to the deanery without Nancy, and learn to dance with the Merridews, who were almost strangers to her. It was a most dreadful idea. Quite enough to spoil Nearminster, or the most pleasant place on earth.
They were models of correct behaviour her very ideal of what young people should be in every respect. If only, she secretly sighed, Mary's girls were more like them! The Merridews, Miss Unity was accustomed to say, were quite the "nicest" people in Nearminster, and she sincerely thought that she enjoyed their society immensely.
The children think of having a collecting-box." "Did you like the sermon, Pennie?" asked Miss Unity as they passed on; "I hope you tried to listen." "I did at first," said Pennie, "till all those names came. I liked the hymn," she added. "Wouldn't it be nice for you to have a collecting-box at home," continued Miss Unity, "like the Merridews, so that you might help these poor people?"
Nurse, and Betty, and Sabine Merridew, and Kettles, and the Cathedral, and the market, and the College. That's five people and three things. And what I didn't like were needlework and dancing, and the dean, and Monsieur Deville, and all the other Merridews." "I hope Betty's made hot-cakes for tea," said Nancy as the carriage stopped at Miss Unity's door.
It was disappointing to find, too, that the acquaintance with the Merridews from which Miss Unity had hoped so much, did not advance quickly; she inquired anxiously, after a few lessons, how Pennie got on with her companions. "Pretty well," answered Pennie; "I like the look of Sabine best, I think." "But she's quite a little thing," said Miss Unity. "Ethel is your age, is she not?"
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