But Penelope—pronounced Penny-lope by her family—was not in the least sorry for herself. At the age of seventeen she showed signs of having inherited all her dead mother’s stoicism, chirpy cheerfulness, and optimism. She had also inherited her mother’s blond beauty, which, although dimmed by dirt and dreary circumstances, occasionally flashed through in all its splendor after her twice-yearly bath. Penelope lived in Bermondsey, under the shadow of London Bridge Station, in a thin, mean brick house lodged tightly in the company of other equally thin, mean brick houses in a long dark street called Cutler’s Fields. With her lived her noisy and drunken father, Bert, and her two small sisters, Emily and Josie. Emily was four and Josie ten. The late Mrs. Smith had departed this world after seeing Emily safely into it, and Penelope’s mourning for her mother was the only thing that dampened her sunny spirits. The day that was to change her life did not have an auspicious beginning.
