Penny Ross had a heart of gold. Yes sir, a heart of gold. Except for those moments when she got it in her head to throw a temper tantrum. Dear me! Now that was quite another story altogether!
It was hard to know what, exactly, might set Penny off. A stiff treacle? Not enough clotted cream for tea? Or was it that wretch of a boy, Quimpert Pittsnoggle IV, and the very rage it caused her to consider how four generations of sons came to inherit such an unfortunate name?
"When I think of the blight that has been perpetuated, lo these many years, it fairly makes my blood boil!,"said Penny through clenched teeth, as she read over her dance card and noticed Pittsnoggle's name scribbled on all the allemandes.
Was if for this she had worn a blouse of palest lilac and braided her hair so tightly it stuck out like semaphores? Was the bold pairing of a high-waisted skirt and crème de menthe stockings really to debut in the presence of that horrid, groping boy? It was unthinkable!
Just then, Penny happened to look up and see Pittsnoggle and his group of trust fund cronies, recounting the afternoon's fox hunt in stifling detail and guffawing into the dregs of their bottomless martinis. For a moment it seemed as if all the air was sucked out of the room and Penny could see, with painful clarity, her entire life parcelled off into a series of dance cards with Quimpert Pittsnoggle's name scrawled all over them. Dear me, but she could feel a tantrum coming on!
Before she could march across the room and emancipate herself, however, a voice sounded in her ear, low and beguiling, oddly familiar: "Who is this vision in lilac? Can it really be little Penny Ross?" Penny spun around and stared at the messenger, then clapped her hands in delight.
"Jasper Finn?! Dear, old Jasper Finn!," she gasped, the color rising in her cheeks.
"'Tis one and the same, at your service," replied the handsome lieutenant, taking her hand and pressing it to his lips.
"I thought...I thought...," she stammered, all too aware that the soldier had not yet released her hand when propriety stipulated he should have done so a good ten seconds earlier!
"You thought wrong," said Finn, his dark eyes looking so deeply into her own that she almost swooned.
"See here now! I say, man! The girl is spoken for!"
Their reverie was broken by the high, strident tones of Quimpert Pittsnoggle IV, who was striding toward them and fumbling for his smelling salts, as if those could solve anything. It was possibly the saddest thing you ever saw--poor Master Quimpert clinging to the notion that one whiff of ammonium carbonate would remedy the situation when anyone could see things had advanced far beyond such a parlor trick.
Jasper Finn, the erstwhile son of a lowly cobbler and now a decorated lieutenant in the Queen's High Command, watched the simpering product of too many generations of arranged marriages with a mixture of amusement and contempt. But there was no need to step in and rescue the lady. To be sure, Penny Ross had a heart of gold, but her temper was more than able to account for the situation!
Pulling the dance card out of her little silk purse, she stepped forward. Without knowing it, Pittsnoggle took one step back.
"Spoken for? Spoken for?!," sputtered Penny, and anyone could see that her braids were making the signal for code red.
"See here, Penny darling, I meant spoken for in an unspoken way, of course...unless you count the dance card...," here Pittsnoggle trailed off into a pathetic if not hopeful silence.
"Oh yes, by all means let us count the dance card!," said the girl, and she tore it into tiny pieces and threw them into the air like a one woman ticker tape parade.
There was a shocked silence.
No one in the history of Fiddleshire Downs had ever been known to desecrate a dance card. Even Jasper Finn, who was not himself a product of the town's elite, was duly impressed.
And so the story goes. That was the night Miss Penny Ross carved out for herself a whole new ending to her story, one that was not so predictable, one that could not be parcelled off into fox hunts, bottomless martinis, nor chaps with an infuriating sense of entitlement and names that should never find themselve ending in Roman numerals.
*******
Dear reader, I hope you will join me for a little fizzy lemonade and cheese party in celebration of reaching the tenth-way mark of my Hundred Dresses Project! I've been having such a lovely time concocting these young ladies and their histoires--they are, for me, just the right amount of silliness, pretty colors, and language to offset some of the more serious realities of life.
Thank you for reading along and leaving such kind and amusing comments. I get such a chuckle from your advice to the heroine or your vision of where the story should go. Some of you have encouraged me to make a little collection of the stories--I can hardly think of a more appealing and delightful notion! It is something to dream of as I go about the more mundane tasks of the day...and who knows? Perhaps there will be a slim volume of Tollipop vignettes in the future, perfect for dramatic readings and bedtime stories!
I did want to mention, to those of you who have taken up the Make 100 Somethings challenge, that I will happily mention your site here on Tollipop once you have posted about your work. I have received several emails from interested participants--please write me with a link to your work and I will be sure to include it in an upcoming post. It's lovely to hear how many of you have interpreted this idea!
Wishing you a wonderful and cozy weekend.