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By Root 482 0

by her than courted by any other: and to be selected as a temporary confidant 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 parlour. ‘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 Doctor 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 Doctor 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