Part 8 (2/2)

”You are going to have a bed and bath before you leave, anyway. Come with me. Kurt, you look as if you had best go to cover, too.”

Pen's outbreak had evidently spent her last drop of reserve force. She submitted meekly to guidance through a long room with low-set windows. She noted a tiled floor with soft rugs, a fireplace and a certain pervading home-sense before they turned into a little hallway. Again she faintly protested.

”I am worse than a thief,” she said. ”I am a liar. I haven't told him--all.”

”Never mind that now,” said Mrs. Kingdon soothingly. ”You've been ill recently, haven't you?”

”Yes; I was just about at the end of--”

”You're at the end of the trail now--the trail to Top Hill. You shall have a bath, a long sleep and something to eat before you try to tell me anything more.”

Pen went on into a sunward room generously supplied with cas.e.m.e.nt windows.

A few rugs, a small but billowy bed, a chair and a table comprised the furnis.h.i.+ngs, but an open door disclosed a bathroom and beyond that a dressing room most adequately equipped.

”This is clover,” she thought presently, when she slipped into a warm bath.

”And this is some more clover,” she murmured later, as, robed in a little nainsook gown, she stretched out luxuriously between lavender scented sheets. ”I don't care what may come later. I know that I am going to have a real sleep.”

It was five o'clock in the afternoon when she awoke. On the chair by her bed was a change of clothing, a pair of white tennis shoes, a dark blue skirt, a white middy and a red tie.

”Oh!” she thought. ”The kind of clothes I love.”

She hastened to dress partially, then slipped on a little negligee and began to do her hair.

”I wish it would sometimes go twice in the same place,” she thought ruefully. ”I never can fix it as I like. It's the only thing that ever got the better of me except Kind Kurt. Well!” with an impatient shake of her rebellious locks, ”go crop-cut, if you insist. I can't help it.”

Mrs. Kingdon smiled when the little girlish figure opened the door in response to her knock.

”I felt sure that that outfit, which was left here by my fifteen-year-old niece when she last visited us, would fit you, though Kurt insists that you are twenty. You had a nice sleep, didn't you?”

”I think I never really slept before. Such a bed, and such heavenly quiet!

So different from street-car racket.”

”My husband and the boys have been away all day, or there wouldn't have been such quiet. Dinner is ready. Kurt didn't tell me your name.”

”Penelope Lamont. My first name is always shortened to Pen or Penny.”

Down stairs in the long, low-ceiling library she was introduced to Mr.

Kingdon, a man of winning personality, a philosopher and a humorist.

Ranged beside him were three appalling critics: two boys of nine and seven years respectively, and a little girl of five. They stared at her solemnly and surveyingly while she was presented to their father.

”Can you skin a weasel?” asked Francis, the oldest lad, when Pen turned to him.

”Mother said you were a young lady,” said Billy. ”You're just a little girl like Doris was.”

”And you've got on her clothes,” declared Betty sagely.

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