flowers of any newer sort; and there are great bushes of box and
southernwood, that smell sweet as you go by.

Old General Pennington had been in the army all his life. He was a
captain at Lundy's Lane, and got a wound there which gave him a stiff
elbow ever after; and his oldest son was killed in Mexico, just after
he had been brevetted Major. There is a Major Pennington now,--the
younger brother,--out at Fort Vancouver; and he is Pen's father. When
her mother died, away out there, he had to send her home. The
Penningtons are just as proud as the stars and stripes themselves; and
their glory is off the selfsame piece.

They made very much of Dakie Thayne when he was here, in their quiet,
retired way; and they had always been polite and cordial to the
Inglesides.

One morning, a little while after our party, mother was making an
apple-pudding for dinner, when Madam Pennington and Miss Elizabeth
drove round to the door.

Ruth was out at her lessons; Barbara was busy helping Mrs. Holabird.
Rosamond went to the door, and let them into the brown room.

"Mother will be sorry to keep you waiting, but she will come directly.
She is just in the middle of an apple-pudding."

Rosamond said it with as much simple grace of pride as if she had had
to say, "Mother is busy at her modelling, and cannot leave her clay
till she has damped and covered it." Her nice perception went to the
very farther-most; it discerned the real best to be made of things,