The Interrupted Tale by Maryrose Wood Read Free Book Online Page B

attention.
    â€œHowever,” Penelope continued, “please note that CAKE is only an acronym, describing a particular, special day that Miss Mortimer has planned.”
    â€œLike a holiday?” Alexander asked.
    â€œYes, I suppose so. But it has nothing to do with—”
    â€œCake Day! Cake Day! The best day of the year!” The boys interrupted before she could explain further. Cassiopeia uncurled, grabbed her feather duster, and joined the celebratory parade around the nursery as the children chanted the names of every kind of cake they could think of: “White cake, yellow cake, angel cake, Gypsy cake, Black Forest cake . . .”
    Penelope did not bother to correct them. Their impromptu Cake Day parade was enough to distract the Incorrigibles from asking more questions, and this suited her perfectly, for she would rather keep her concerns about Judge Quinzy and Miss Mortimer’s strange letter to herself for now. Besides, their excitement about cake had reminded her of an important task that she would have done at once, except that the urgency of Miss Mortimer’s summons had knocked it out of her mind: She needed to write a thank-you note to Mrs. Clarke for organizing that wonderful surprise birthday party.
    At last she could try out her new fountain pen! Truly, it was a marvelous invention. Penelope could scarcely believe that it did not run out of ink after a few words, as a quill pen always did. Simply holding this fine pen made her feel poetically inspired, and she wrote:
    Â 
    Dear Mrs. Clarke,
    Â 
    I thank you for the party yesterday.
    It made my birthday full of joy and cake.
    Hooray, hooray, hooray, hooray, hooray!
    Three cheers for Cook as well, for she can bake!
    Â 
    â€œMore iambic pentameter, ta-TUM, ta-TUM, hooRAY, hooRAY ,” she said to herself as she signed her name at the bottom. “And two rhymes this time! Penny old girl, you have outdone yourself.” She was well aware that the “hoorays” made five cheers, not three, but there was no need to split hairs. After all, with thank-you notes, as with so many other things in life, it was the thought that counted.
    Gently, she blew on the ink, but it hardly needed any time to dry. She folded the letter crisply, slipped it inside an envelope, and sealed it with a drip of wax from a candle. Feeling playful, she used the edge of her thumbnail to press an L for “Lumley” into the soft wax, just as if she had her own personal seal.
    â€œWho is ripe for an adventure?” she called out gaily. The Incorrigibles jumped up and down, waving their dusters so vigorously that the loose feathers wafted down like snow. She held up the sealed envelope. “I have a letter here addressed to Mrs. Clarke, and it must be delivered.”
    â€œPost office! Post office!” the children cried.
    Penelope smiled at their eagerness to go to town; she hoped they would be as cheerful about traveling all the way to Heathcote, a far longer and more exhausting trip. “Under normal circumstances, the post office is exactly the right place to bring a letter to be sent,” she replied. “However, as Mrs. Clarke’s bedchamber is just upstairs, I see no need to put this particular letter in the post. Shall we deliver it ourselves?”
    Â 
    H OW GLORIOUS IT WAS INDEED to be a postal employee! After a brief recess for luncheon (Penelope had long ago learned her lesson about skipping meals; a hungry Incorrigible was prone to mayhem, and must be avoided at all costs), the children quickly fashioned costumes for themselves out of their dress-up trunk. They turned their pillowcases into mailbags full of letters. They even carried slingshots loaded with very hard acorns, in case they met up with dangerous mail bandits along their postal route. This was unlikely, as they only needed to go up a flight of stairs. But they were not ready to stop being tygers yet, or to end their Cake Day parade, so they