"Mother, I guess I was naughty last night. I said, 'Give us TOMORROW our daily bread,' instead of TODAY. It seemed more LOGICAL. Do you think God minded, Mother?”
Chapter 28
Cock Robin did come back when Ingleside and Rainbow Valley burned again with the green, evasive flames of spring, and brought a bride with him. The two built a nest in Walter's apple tree and Cock Robin resumed all his old habits, but his bride was shyer or less venturesome and would never let anyone come very near her. Susan thought Cock Robin's return a positive miracle and wrote Rebecca Dew about it that very night.
The spotlight in the little drama of life at Ingleside shifted from time to time, now falling on this one, now on that. They had got through the winter without anything very much out of the way happening to anyone and in June it was Di's turn to have an adventure.
A new girl had begun coming to school ... a girl who said, when the teacher asked her her name, "I am Jenny Penny," as one might say, "I am Queen Elizabeth," or "I am Helen of Troy." You felt the minute she said it that not to know Jenny Penny argued yourself unknown, and not to be condescended to by Jenny Penny meant you didn't exist at all. At least, that was how Diana Blythe felt about it, even if she couldn't have put it into those exact words.
Jenny Penny had nine years to Di's eight but from the first she took rank with the "big girls" of ten and eleven. They found they could not snub or ignore her. She was not pretty but her appearance was striking ... everybody looked at her twice. She had a round creamy face with a soft glossless cloud of soot-black hair about it and enormous dusky blue eyes with long tangled black lashes. When she slowly raised those lashes and looked at you with those scornful eyes you felt that you were a worm honoured in not being stepped on. You liked better to be snubbed by her than courted by any other: and to be selected as a temporary confidante of Jenny Penny's was an honour almost too great to be borne. For Jenny Penny's confidences were exciting. Evidently the Pennys were no common people. Jenny's Aunt Lina, it appeared, possessed a wonderful gold and garnet necklace which had been given her by an uncle who was a millionaire. One of her cousins had a diamond ring that cost a thousand dollars and another cousin had won a prize in elocution over seventeen hundred competitors. She had an aunt who was a missionary and worked among the leopards in India. In short, the Glen schoolgirls, for a time at least, accepted Jenny Penny at her own valuation, looked up to her with mingled admiration and envy, and talked so much about her at their supper tables that their elders were finally constrained to take notice.
"WHO is this little girl Di seems so taken up with, Susan?" asked Anne one evening, after Di had been telling of "the mansion" Jenny lived in, with white wooden lace around its roof, five bay-windows, a wonderful birch grove behind it, and a red marble mantelpiece in the parlor. "Penny is a name I've never heard in Four Winds. Do you know anything about them?”
"They are a new family that have moved to the old Conway farm on the Base Line, Mrs. Dr. dear. Mr. Penny is said to be a carpenter who couldn't make a living carpentering ... being too busy, as I understand, trying to prove there is no God ... and has decided to try farming. From all I can make out they are a queer lot. The young ones do just as they like. He says he was bossed to death when he was a kid and his children are not going to be. That is why this Jenny one is coming to the Glen school. They are nearer the Mowbray Narrows school and the other children go there, but Jenny made up her mind to come to the Glen. Half the Conway farm is in this district, so Mr. Penny pays rates to both schools and, of course, he can send his children to both if he likes. Though it seems this Jenny is his niece, not his daughter. Her father and mother are dead. They say it was George Andrew Penny who put the sheep in the basement of the Baptist church at Mowbray Narrows. I do not say they are not respectable, but they are all so UNKEMPT, Mrs. Dr. dear ... and the house is topsy-turvy ... and, if I may presume to advise, you do not want Diana mixed up with a monkey tribe like that.”
"I can't exactly prevent her from associating with Jenny in school, Susan. I don't really know anything against the child, though I feel sure she draws a long bow in telling of her relatives and adventures. However, Di will probably soon get over this 'crush' and we'll hear no more of Jenny Penny.”
They continued to hear of her, however. Jenny told Di she liked her best of all the girls in the Glen school and Di, feeling that a queen had stooped to her, responded adoringly. They became inseparable at recesses; they wrote notes to each other over the weekends; they gave and received "chews" of gum: they traded buttons and cooperated in dust piles; and finally Jenny asked Di to go home with her from school and stay all night with her.
Mother said, "No," very decidedly and Di wept copiously.
"You've let me stay all night with Persis Ford," she sobbed.
"That was ... different," said Anne, a little vaguely. She did not want to make a snob of Di, but all she had heard about the Penny family had made her realize that as friends for the Ingleside children they were quite out of the question and she had been considerably worried of late over the fascination Jenny so evidently possessed for Diana.
"I don't see any difference," wailed Di. "Jenny is just as much of a lady as Persis, so there! She NEVER chews bought gum. She has a cousin who knows all the rules of etiquette and Jenny has learned them all from her. Jenny says WE don't know what etiquette is.
And she has had the most exciting adventures.”
"Who says she has?" demanded Susan.
"She told me herself. Her folks aren't rich but they have got very rich and respectable relatives. Jenny has an uncle who is a judge and a cousin of her mother's is captain of the biggest vessel in the world. Jenny christened the ship for him when it was launched.
WE haven't got an uncle who is a judge or an aunt who is a missionary to leopards either.”
"Lepers, dear, not leopards.”
"Jenny SAID leopards. I guess she ought to know since it is her aunt. And there are so many things at her house I want to see ... her room is papered with PARROTS ... and their parlour is FULL of stuffed owls ... and they have a hooked rug with a house on it in the hall ... and window blinds just covered with roses ... and a REAL HOUSE to play in ... her uncle built it for them ... and her Gammy lives with them and is the oldest person in the world. Jenny says she lived before the flood. I may never have another chance to see a person who lived before the flood.”
"The grandmother is close on a hundred, I am told," said Susan, "but if your Jenny said she lived before the flood she is fibbing.
You would be likely to catch goodness knows what if you went to a place like that.”
"They've had everything they could have long ago," protested Di.
"Jenny says they've had mumps and measles and whooping-cough and scarlet fever all in one year.”
"I wouldn't put it past them having the smallpox," muttered Susan.
"Talk of people being bewitched!”
"Jenny has to have her tonsils out," sobbed Di. "But THAT isn't catching, is it? Jenny had a cousin who died when she had her tonsils out ... she bled to death without gaining conscious. So it is likely Jenny will too, if it runs in the family. She is delicate ... she fainted three times last week. But she is QUITE PREPARED. And that is partly why she is so anxious to have me spend a night with her ... so that I'd have it to remember after she passed away. PLEASE, Mother. I'll go without the new hat with ribbon streamers you promise me if you'll let me.”
But Mother was adamant and Di betook herself to a tearful pillow.
Nan had no sympathy for her ... Nan "had no use" for Jenny Penny.