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Jean nodded. "Mrs. M'Cosh often says, 'There's mony a lang gant in a cairriage, and I dare say it's true. I don't want to be ungrateful, Pamela. I think it's about the worst sin one can commit ingratitude. And I don't want to be stuffy, either, but I think I was meant for small ways." "Poor Penny-plain! Never mind. I'm not going to preach any more. You shall do just as you please with your life.
"But they are my charge," Jean explained. "They were left to me. Mother said, before she went away that last time, 'I trust you, Jean, to look after the boys, and when father didn't come back, and Great-aunt Alison died, they had only me." "Can't you adopt me as well? Do you know, Penny-plain, I believe it is all the fault of your Great-aunt Alison.
"You hurt me when you speak like that. Do you think I would let you burden yourself with all my family? I would never be anything but a drag on you. You must go away, Richard Plantagenet, and take your proper place in the world, and forget all about Priorsford and Penny-plain, and marry someone who will help you with your career and be a fit mistress for your great houses, and I'll just stay here.
You've got lovely clothes, and we'll go straight to Mintern Abbas, where it doesn't matter what we wear. I tell you what, we'll go to London to-morrow and see lawyers and things do you realise you haven't even got an engagement ring, you neglected child? And tell Pam Mad? Of course, it's mad. It's the way they did in the Golden World. It's Rosalind and Orlando. Be persuaded, Penny-plain."
"'To eat your supper in a room Blazing with lights, four Titians on the wall And twenty naked girls to change your plate?" Jean laughed. "Something like that, I suppose. Anyway he wants a smart parlour-maid at once, and a motor-car. Also he wants me to wear earrings, and talk slang, and wear the newest sort of clothes." "Poor Penny-plain, are you going to be forced into being twopence coloured?
What would that penny-plain- and-twopence-coloured bogey, the Nonconformist Conscience, make of such a story if it were blazoned through the land. Would Paul not come down with a run? "Spilling blood" is a figure of speech; pretty, perhaps, but vague. If you mean that Mr Lessingham has been killing someone, your surest and most effectual revenge would be gained by an appeal to the law.
The yellow lights in Jean's eyes sparkled. "If you'll call me Penny-plain," she said. "Then that's a bargain, though I don't think either of us is well suited. However now that we are really friends, what did you do this afternoon that was so very important?" "Talked to Lewis Elliot for one thing: he came to tea." "I see. An excellent fellow, Lewis. He's a relation of yours, isn't he?"
"I knew," said Jean, "that it would be something very twopence-coloured." "It's not, I grant, such a jolly name as yours," said Lord Bidborough "Jean Jardine." "Oh, mine is Penny-plain," said Jean hurriedly. "Must we always call you Lord?" Mhor asked. "Of course you must," Jean said. "Really, Mhor, you and Jock are sometimes very stupid." "Indeed you must not," said Lord Bidborough.
"Why shouldn't we, Penny-plain? Why shouldn't we? I know you hate a fussy marriage and dread all the letters and presents and meeting crowds of people who are strangers to you. Of course, it's frightfully good of Mrs. Hope to offer to have it at Hopetoun, but that means waiting, and this is the spring-time, the real 'pretty ring-time. I would rush up to London and get a special licence.
Jean could see him so clearly, listening, smiling, with lazy, amused eyes. By now he must be thankful that the penny-plain girl at Priorsford had not snatched at the offer he had made her, but had had the sense to send him away. It must have been a sudden madness on his part.
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