The Penderwicks: A Summer Tale of Four Sisters, Two Rabbits, and a Very Interesting Boy

The cozy yellow cottage enchants the family, and the four sisters race inside to choose rooms. To ensure fairness, they use “The Hound Draw for Order” (15), whereby Hound selects from slips of paper placed next to a crumbled dog biscuit. Jane wins the first pick, and Skye draws last because Hound ate her slip of paper. Skye is disappointed because she had her heart set on a white, airy bedroom. At home, she shares a room with Jane, who is messy and disorganized and longs for a space all to herself. Rosalind kindly gives Skye the large white bedroom with two beds and three windows and takes a smaller room closer to Batty. Skye immediately begins unpacking her things and making plans to rotate between the two beds for different days of the week. Rosalind places a photo on her nightstand of Mrs. Penderwick holding her as a baby. Everyone thinks Skye looks like her mother, but she can’t see it: “The blond hair and blue eyes were the same, true, but that was it, as far as Skye could tell. […] there was that other big difference—Skye couldn’t imagine herself ever hugging a baby and laughing at the same time” (18). Batty is excited to find a secret passage in her room, which is just a connecting closet. Jane will stay in the attic room and is already at work on her next Sabrina story.

Skye begins exploring and sees her father putting Hound in his fenced area. He tells her in Latin to be careful, but Skye plans to sneak into Mrs. Tifton’s gardens. A tall stone wall separates the gardens from the cottage property, but Skye finds a small tunnel through the hedge. She thinks about how Rosalind would find it suspicious but Jane would see it as a portal to adventure. Skye is practical and is happy to use the tunnel to enter the sprawling gardens. Cagney is there, but just as Skye speaks to him, Mrs. Tifton approaches, and he quickly hides Skye in a stone planter. Mrs. Tifton reprimands Cagney and demands that he fill the urns with flowers and remove the white rosebush near the driveway before the Garden Club competition in three weeks. After Mrs. Tifton leaves and Skye emerges from her hiding spot, Cagney explains that his uncle planted the rosebush 30 years ago. Skye suggests that he move it near the cottage so that her father can watch over it. Hearing Mrs. Tifton call for Cagney again, Skye runs back toward the hedge but crashes into a pale boy with freckles. Fearing that he’s injured, Skye fans him with her hat, and he says he’s okay. Mrs. Tifton calls, “JEFFREY!” and when Skye tells the boy they’d better run to get away from snobby old Mrs. Tifton, the boy says she’s his mother.

Batty has an elaborate bedtime routine that involves a special blanket and the specific placement of all her stuffed animals. She hears a bedtime story from Rosalind each night before her father comes to tuck her in. Batty is a bit nervous about sleeping in an unfamiliar bed in a new house and wishes Hound could sleep with her, but knowing Rosalind is in the next room connected by the secret passageway comforts Batty. Skye has called a “Meeting of Older Penderwick Sisters,” or MOOPS (30). The meetings are only for Rosalind, Skye, and Jane, and they’re sworn to secrecy. Sometimes the sisters have a “Meeting of Penderwick Sisters,” or MOPS (30), which includes Batty, who dislikes being left out. Hound bounds into Batty’s room, and she quickly hides him in the closet, but he opens the door. Rosalind tells her that their father agreed to let Hound sleep upstairs for one night until Batty is settled, but he can’t sleep in the bed. For her bedtime story, Batty asks for the one about how she got her name. Rosalind reluctantly explains how her mother, who was terminally ill with cancer, asked to use her name Elizabeth and when Mr. Penderwick protested, she said to call her Batty for short: “Daddy got sad and said there could only ever be one Elizabeth for him” (32). Mrs. Penderwick died two weeks after Batty’s birth.

In the MOOPS meeting, Skye reveals her encounter with Jeffrey. Rosalind says Skye must apologize to him for what she said about Mrs. Tifton, but Skye is too embarrassed. They take a vote and decide that they’ll tell their father what happened and that Jane will apologize on the family’s behalf. Rosalind gives Jane a script for what to say to prevent her from being overly dramatic.

Jane walks to Arundel Hall to deliver the scripted apology to either Jeffery or Mrs. Tifton (she has a speech prepared for each) while Rosalind and Skye bake cookies. After Jane delivers the apology, she’s to ask Jeffrey to visit the cottage for cookies, which the girls hope will compensate for Skye’s rudeness. Skye doesn’t enjoy baking the cookies and doubts that the plan will work. Cagney arrives to transplant the rosebush, and Rosalind helps him unload it from his truck, leaving Skye in charge of finishing the cookies. Rosalind sees Batty frozen next to Hound’s cage and must explain to Cagney that Batty is shy around strangers and won’t talk to them “[…] until she’s found a common interest” (40). Cagney asks if Batty likes rabbits because he has two at the carriage house where he lives. Batty’s face shows her excitement, and Cagney invites Rosalind to bring her to visit the rabbits. Rosalind doesn’t share her father’s love of flowers because she sees them as one more thing in the house to care for, but she enjoys being around Cagney and feels slightly silly about her developing crush.

Jane practices her speech while walking to Arundel Hall and must stop herself from embellishing it for dramatic effect. She’s simultaneously adding to her Sabrina story and creating a storyline for the vanishing boy in the window, whom she has named Arthur. Jane rings the doorbell, and the housekeeper, Mrs. Churchill (or “Churchie”) answers the door and invites Jane inside. Churchie already knows about the Penderwicks and tells Jane that they haven’t told Mrs. Tifton about Hound. Jane asks to speak with Jeffrey, and when he appears, he looks nothing like she pictured him—or like her fictional Arthur. Jeffrey has a bruise on his head but claims he’s okay after his collision. Jane delivers her speech, and Churchie is impressed, but Jeffrey dryly accepts the apology. Disappointed by his reaction, Jane offers to add more flourish to the speech, but Jeffrey declines. He accepts her invitation to the cottage for cookies, and as they walk, they fall easily into conversation. Jeffrey explains that Cagney created the shrubbery tunnel for him to escape during his mother’s Garden Club meetings. In addition, Cagney gave him a pet iguana named Darwin, but Mrs. Tifton is allergic and Darwin now lives with Cagney’s daughter in Boston. Jeffrey is an only child and is often lonely, but Jane tells him all about her other sisters and assures him that he won’t be lonely while they’re at Arundel.

At the cottage, Skye puts the cookies in the oven on broil and quickly becomes distracted by her math lessons. The cookies catch fire, and Cagney and Rosalind run inside with the water hose to prevent further disaster. Skye responds to the commotion in the kitchen, and Rosalind expresses her anger about Skye’s negligence. Skye, not realizing that Jane and Jeffrey are in the doorway, launches into a tirade about how she didn’t want to make cookies for the spoiled boy next door anyway. Just then, Mr. Penderwick enters the kitchen and introduces himself to Jeffrey.

Mr. Penderwick suggests that Skye take a walk with Jane, Batty, and Jeffrey to unwind. As they walk, Skye trails behind as Jane and Jeffrey drone on about subjects she finds boring. Jeffrey takes them to see a fabled bull that lives near the property behind a wooden gate. Jeffrey relates the tale, as Cagney told it to him, of how the bull gored a man across his belly. The grumpy old bull only scratched the tourist, but the tall tale has grown over the years. The children peer through a knothole in the fence but can’t see the bull. They use a nearby ladder to climb over the fence and into the field to get a better look. Skye is the “Oldest Available Penderwick,” or OAP (62), and is supposed to watch Batty, but the shy sister wanders away from the group into the bushes and finds a gap below the fence that leads into the bull’s pasture. There, Batty busies herself with picking daisies and watching bugs and doesn’t notice the huge bull emerge from the barn. As Jane and the others climb the ladder, they realize that Batty is missing. From atop the stone wall, Jane sees the bull moving toward Batty and screams. Seeing the bull, Batty says, “Nice horsie […] (57), and tries not to panic. She wishes her father or Hound were there to save her. Jeffrey and Jane scream and throw rocks at the bull to divert its attention, while Skye swoops in and carries Batty out of danger. Batty is amazed by her sisters’ and Jeffrey’s bravery and sees them as her heroes. Skye thanks Jeffrey for his help and earnestly apologizes for what she said in the kitchen. As they shake hands, Jane adds the moment to the storyline of her tale. The girls invoke the “Penderwick Family Honor” (64), agreeing not to tell their father or Rosalind about the bull incident. Since Jeffrey saved Batty’s life, they deem him part of the family. They hear a nearby crashing noise and fear the bull is charging again. As the kids run away, Hound, having broken out of his fence, crashes through the brush looking for Batty.