In for a Penny Read Online Free PDF

good one, no. New bills come every day, and—I’ve no head for numbers, MissBrown. I’ve added it all up enough to make my eyes ache and come up with a different answer every time.”
    Here at least she was on sure ground, and the sudden sense of her own competence bolstered her. She smiled at him. “Well, I cannot help you with your other problems until we are wed, but that one I can help you with now. Has anyone ever taught you to cast out nines?”
    “What is that?”
    “It’s a method for verifying sums. Here, come over to the writing desk.” She scribbled a short column of numbers and totted them up. “This won’t catch all mistakes, but it’ll catch most.” She showed him what to do. “…Now when you add up all the one-digit numbers—again ignoring any nines—they ought to be the same as your sum. Do you understand?”
    His eyes were narrowed in concentration. “Do it once more?”
    His evident amazement that the trick worked a second time made her want to laugh. “Here, let me try,” he said, scrawling an example of his own in a sloping Italian hand. “Jupiter! That’s astonishing! However did you come to know such a thing?”
    She looked down. “I sometimes help my father with his books.” Keeping the books of a brewery was not a proper occupation for a young lady. It was a moment before she could raise her eyes to his, knowing she could not but be lowered in his esteem.
    His eyes were filled with such azure wonder that she caught her breath. “I knew you were just what I needed!”
    She laughed. “Perhaps you had better bring your man of business with you tomorrow.”
    But all laughter was at an end when Evans arrived to show him out. Any moment now her mother or father would come in, and she would have to admit what she had done. She would have to admit that she had agreed to spend the rest ofher life with a man of whose character she knew nothing—or worse than nothing! A man, in fact, of whom she knew only that he had a spendthrift father, a taste for strong drink, and a very pretty mistress.
    He likes music , an insidious voice whispered inside her. And he kisses well . She flushed with mortification. She had always prided herself on her self-command, her firmness of purpose. Yet she had staked her future on one throw of the die; she had agreed to give herself, body and soul, to a handsome young man on the strength of a kiss. She was a weakwilled, foolish girl, indeed. Her eyes ran listlessly over the desk—and lighted on Edward’s letter.
    She had forgotten Edward! Her eye dwelt in horror on his familiar neat script. This weekend, an associate insisted on taking me on a tour of Paris’s most picturesque Gothick churches, though I assured him I have no part in the great fad for all things Gothick that ensnares so many of my countrymen. But I think you would have enjoyed hearing the organ of Notre Dame de Paris—it is larger than anything you can imagine, and though I could not judge myself I am told that the organist is prodigious talented .
    What was she going to tell Edward?
    Penelope was still staring at the letter when her father walked in a few minutes later. “My, you got rid of that Bedlow fellow quick, didn’t you? I told him it were a waste of time, but he seemed awful set on talking to you, and I knew you’d be able to send him about his business with a sight more tact than I could.” He noticed her dazed face. “He didn’t insult you, did he?”
    She took a deep breath. “I accepted his offer, Papa.”
    “What?”
    She nodded.
    “But—but—call him back and refuse it, then! The blackguard’s a fortune hunter. I thought you would know that.”
    Though she had been longing to do that very thing when her father had walked in, she stiffened. “I did know it, Papa. He was very honest with me. He is coming tomorrow at eleven to discuss the settlements with you.”
    Mr. Brown turned very red. “I shall certainly not receive him! A wastrel and spendthrift if I ever