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Kitty Trenire

by Mabel Quiller-Couch · English · Gutenberg #13992 · 440,796 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Kitty Trenire

Author: Mabel Quiller-Couch


        
Release date: November 9, 2004 [eBook #13992]
                Most recently updated: October 28, 2024

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/13992

Credits: E-text prepared by an anonymous Project Gutenberg volunteer. The source was a Sunday-school prize presented in 1920 to Lily Richardson by the United Methodist Church, Regent Street, Stockton


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK KITTY TRENIRE ***

KITTY TRENIRE

by

MABEL QUILLER-COUCH







CONTENTS.


I.      Fate and a Rusty Nail.

II.     The News, and how they received it.

III.    A Drive and a Slice of Cake.

IV.     Storms at Home and Abroad

V.      In Wenmere Woods.

VI.     Tea at the Farm.

VII.    The "Rover" takes them Home.

VIII.   A Bad Beginning.

IX.     The Coming of Anna.

X.      Lessons, Alarms, and Warnings.

XI.     Poor Kitty!

XII.    Those Dreadful Stockings.

XIII.   An Exciting Night.

XIV.    Mokus and Carrots

XV.     Missing!

XVI.    Banished.

XVII.   "Good in Everything".

XVIII.  Threatening Clouds.

XIX.    Betty's Escapade.

XX.     Kitty's Hands are Full.

XXI.    The Last.




CHAPTER I.


FATE AND A RUSTY NAIL.

On such an afternoon, when all the rest of the world lay in the fierce
glare of the scorching sun, who could blame the children for choosing to
perch themselves on the old garden wall, where it was so cool, and
shady, and enticing?  And who, as Kitty often asked tragically in the
days and weeks that followed, could have known that by doing so "they
were altering their fates for ever"?

The four of them talked a great deal in those days of their "fates;"
it sounded so mysterious and grand, and so interesting too, for, of
course, no one could know what lay in store for them all, and the most
wonderful and surprising events might happen. They did happen to some
people, and why not to them?

"I am quite sure something will happen to me some day," said Betty, with
a very wise and serious look.

"I shouldn't be surprised," said Dan with mock seriousness,
"if something did."

"I mean something wonderful, of course," added Betty.  "Don't," with a
superior air, "be silly, Dan.  Things must happen to somebody, or there
would never be any."

Later that same day they realized for the first time that small events
could be interesting and important too, and that while they were
thinking of their "fates" as something to be spun and woven in the
mysterious future, the shuttle was already flying fast.

As I said before, the old wall was particularly cool and
tempting-looking that sunny afternoon, for the high, untrimmed laurel
hedge on the other side of the path behind them threw a deep broad
shadow over the flat top of it, and shade was what one appreciated most
on that hot day.  All the ground in Gorlay sloped, for Gorlay was built
on two hills, while the gardens of all the houses on either side sloped
either up or down another and a steeper hill.  Dr. Trenire's house was
on the left-hand side of the street, as one walked up it, and it was the
steep slope up of the garden behind it that made the old wall so
fascinating.

To reach the garden from the house one had to pass through a cobbled
yard, with the back wing of the house and a stable on one side of it,
and a coach-house and another stable on the other.  The garden and the
garden wall were at the end.  From the yard the wall ran up to a good
height--to the children it seemed immense, as high as the tower of
Babel, though were they to go back now and look at it I dare say they
would find it quite insignificant, for walls have a curious way of
decreasing an inch or two with every year one grows older.

To the children, though, its two chief charms were that it had a broad
flat top on which one could sit and dangle one's legs over the abyss
below, and that from the garden it was so low that by just walking over
a flower-bed one could step right on to it, while from that eminence one
could command a view of the back door, the side door, the stables, and
all that went on in the yard.  So that, in addition to being cool and
shady, it really was a most attractive and alluring spot.

A vine with a wealth of pretty leaves and long graceful tendrils covered
the front of the stable and side of the house, and some years there
would be a few bunches of little green grapes hanging amongst the
leaves.  Through the open stable window, festooned by the vine, dear old
Prue, Dr. Trenire's well-beloved and faithful mare, would thrust out her
head and gaze dreamily at the life in the yard, or at nothing; and the
children, if they were about, would rub her nose and fondle her
lovingly, and bring her handfuls of grass, or carrots, or sugar.
Sometimes, too, "Pinkie," the yellow cat, would seat herself on the
narrow sill of the stable window, close to Prue's cheek, until, finding
the air too chilly, or the children too noisy, or sleep overcoming her,
she would go inside and curl herself up on Prue's back for a nap.

To-day, though, neither Prue nor Pinkie were to be seen.
Apparently they were both indulging in an afternoon nap in the shady
stable, for it really was a very hot day, and the sun fell full on the
vine and the stable window.

Unfortunately it fell on the door too, and showed up a most inviting and
enticing-looking spot where the sun had once raised a blister on the
paint.

Every one will admit that there is a wonderful fascination about a nice
soft paint-blister, and busy fingers had quickly peeled this one off,
with the result that to-day there was a spot which made as good a target
as any one could possibly desire, and just within range of their perch
on the wall.  There was also, unfortunately, quite close at hand a
supply of perfect ammunition in the shape of a heap of small stones and
rubbish which they had swept together a few days before when seized by a
sudden mania for tidying up the garden.  Of course, had they been really
good children, they would have finished their job by shovelling up the
heap and carrying it away; but they grew very tired, and the work was
hard, and they felt they really had done a great deal for one day.
So the heap was left in the path until, on this hot afternoon, they
found a new and not at all tiring way of disposing of most of it.

They kept up such a sharp fire, and made such a noise, that presently
Jabez, the coachman and general factotum, was dancing with rage in the
yard below--rage at the noise they were making and the litter he foresaw
he would have to sweep up before "the master" saw the place, and added
rage at the calm unconcern with which they ignored his commands.

The children, though really very much attached to Jabez, unfortunately
felt no fear of him, and above all things they loved to tease him.
They would not willingly have hurt him on any account whatever, but, as
they said afterwards, when he deliberately placed himself between them
and their target, and dared them to throw another stone, why of course
he had to put up with what he got; and what he got most particularly was
a nasty blow on the forehead from a piece of old wood that Dan threw at
him.

Dan, as he explained at the time, really selected the wood out of pure
humanity, because he thought it would be softer than a stone if it
should happen to strike any one; and, as he argued emphatically,
"it was ridiculous to think he could have known that Jabez was going to
duck his silly head at the very wrong moment, and it was even more
ridiculous of Jabez to accuse him of knowing that there was a large
rusty nail in the wood, for Jabez knew as well as possible that he, Dan,
would have been only too jolly glad to have had the nail, for he was
collecting old iron as hard as he could, intending to sell it the very
next time the 'old-iron' man came round."

Instead of which it was taken by Jabez, along with his bleeding head,
straight into the presence of Dr. Trenire, who happened at the moment to
be sitting in his study, trying to get a little sorely-needed rest.
The doctor had been out all the previous night at a most trying case,
and body and brain were weary, his nerves all on edge, his patience
nearly exhausted, and he had no time or inclination for unpleasant
interruptions and unnecessary worries.  Altogether there could not have
been a much more unpropitious moment for any one to have gone to him
than that which Jabez chose.

As a rule Dr. Trenire was only too gentle and kind and patient with his
four motherless children; but to-day, when they slowly, and at a
discreet distance, followed Jabez into the study, Kitty felt a sudden
conviction that things were not going to be quite as simply and easily
got over as usual.  She saw a look cross her father's face such as she
had never seen on it before, and for the first time in her careless,
happy-go-lucky life realized with keen compunction what a sad, tired,
patient face it was, and suddenly she found herself wanting to do things
for him to try to cheer and help him, and wished most heartily that they
had done anything but bring fresh worry and unpleasantness to him.

But before he inquired into the particulars of the squabble, Dr. Trenire
attended to the wound.  It was only a surface one, but the skin was torn
rather badly, and Jabez was bleeding a good deal, and groaning with all
his might.

"Get me some hot water."

Only too glad to be able to do anything to help, Kitty ran off; but to
run for hot water was one thing, to get it was quite another.  The fire
was out, the kitchen was littered with dishes and pots and pans, and
Fanny the cook, with a dirty apron on and no cap, was fast asleep in her
chair by the window, just as though she had not a care or a duty in the
world.  The squalor and muddle of the whole place could not fail to
strike any one, even casual Kitty;  and to her it brought a deeper
feeling, one of trouble and remorse, for, in response to her own
pleading, her father had made her his housekeeper--and this was how she
had fulfilled her duties!  In fact, she had given herself no duties; she
had shirked them.  She had left everything to the servants, and as long
as she had been free and untroubled, and meals of a kind had been served
at more or less regular intervals, had bothered no further.

"Fanny!" she called sharply, "do wake up!  Why haven't you got a fire,
and a kettle boiling?"

Fanny awoke with a start, which in itself is enough to make a person
cross; and to have been caught asleep, with her work not done, made her
crosser.  "I don't want a great fire burning on a hot afternoon like
this," she answered sharply.  "You wouldn't like it yourself if you had
to sit by it, Miss Kitty; and if it's your tea you'm wanting, well, it
isn't tea-time yet.  When 'tis, you will find 'tis ready."

"Um--m!" said Kitty loftily, in a tone that expressed most emphatic
doubt of Fanny's statement.

"What is it you're routing about in the cupboards for, miss?  I don't
like to have folks coming into my kitchen, turning everything over and
rummaging round.  I shan't know where to find a thing when I wants to.
What is it you'm looking for?"

"The methylated spirit and the little stove," said Kitty.  "I _must_
have some hot water, Fanny, and quickly.  Father wants some.  There has
been an accident."

Fanny changed her tone, and her expression grew a little milder.
"We haven't got a leak, miss.  We ran out of it a week ago.  I told
Emily to tell you--but there, I might as well talk to the wind as talk
to her--"

"Oh dear," interrupted Kitty, "whatever shall I do?  Jabez is bleeding
so he will bleed to death--"

"Jabez!  Oh my!  Whatever has happened, Miss Kitty?"  Suddenly Fanny's
whole manner changed to one of anxious eagerness and deep concern.
"Is it--is it dangerous, miss?  How did it happen?  What's he done?"
Fanny had been so sound asleep that she had not noticed the noise in the
yard, or the little procession pass the kitchen window on its way to the
study.

"I don't think it is very bad," said Kitty.  "Dan threw a piece of wood,
and it--it hit Jabez on the forehead, and--and oh, Fanny, what will
father think?  I believe he is angry with us already, and you know he
was out all night and is very tired, and he will be more angry if
there's no hot water or anything he wants, and I--I did so want to help
him."

Fanny, who appeared more concerned about Jabez than about her master,
was, with a lavish use of sticks, kindling a big blaze under a small
kettle, and soon had water ready as hot as it was needed.  Kitty,
greatly relieved, ran back with it to her father.

"I suppose, as usual, there was none," he said gravely, "though I have
said until I am tired that in a doctor's house there should always be a
supply;" and Kitty could find nothing to say.

Jabez by this time was seated in a chair, facing the light.  He was
looking very pale and subdued.  The thought of having his wound
washed and dressed upset him far more than did the wound itself.
Betty and Anthony were sitting on two of the stiffest and most
uncomfortable-looking chairs in the room, with very grave expressions
on their pale but not too clean faces.  Dan was standing by the window
looking intensely nervous and uncomfortable.  He glanced frequently from
Jabez to his father, and back again, and Kitty could see he was longing
to say something, but did not know how to.  She was very sorry that it
had been Dan who had dealt the fatal blow.  She almost wished that it
had been she herself who had done it, for their father was never quite
so severe with her or Betty as with the boys.

With the feeling still on her that trouble was coming, she fried to make
herself as useful as possible; but as she knew little or nothing as to
where anything was kept, she was more of a hindrance than a help, and
her hopes were blighted by her father's order to them all to leave the
room.

"I will see you presently," he said sternly.  "I will either come to you
or send for you when I am ready;" and, feeling very crushed, they made
their way to the old nursery, now called "the schoolroom," and there
waited with curiously mingled feelings for what was to happen next.
They did not expect it to be anything _very_ serious; but they hated to
vex their father, and they felt that now they really had vexed him.

Oh how slowly the minutes passed, and what a lot of them there were!
It seemed to them that time enough had elapsed in which to have set
every limb that Jabez possessed, and to hear the recital of every wrong
he had ever received at their hands; and by the time they heard their
father's footstep coming their hopes and fears had gone up and down
again many times, and they had pictured themselves sentenced to every
possible and impossible punishment that their minds could imagine.



CHAPTER II.


THE NEWS, AND HOW THEY RECEIVED IT.

When the door opened and Dr. Trenire came in with the heavy tread of a
very weary man, and the face of a very worried one, another and a larger
wave of shame and remorse rushed over them all.

Dan stepped forward at once to put his feelings into words.  "I am
fearfully sorry, father," he said impetuously.  "I--I was a brute to
throw the things at Jabez; but I--I never meant to hurt him.  Is it very
bad?"

"It is not a serious wound by any means," said the doctor slowly;
"but, of course, the wood was old and dirty, and the nail rusty, and
there is always danger of blood-poisoning."

"Oh, I hadn't thought of that," said Dan, looking alarmed.

"No, that is just it," sighed the doctor; "you don't think.  No one in
the house thinks, it seems to me.  I suppose, though, it isn't your
fault; you have no one to teach you," and he sighed a heavy, harassed
sigh.

The children's mother had died nearly five years earlier, when Kitty was
nine, and Anthony but a year old.  For a time a housekeeper had been
employed to manage both children and servants; but so uncomfortable had
been her rule, so un-homelike the house, so curbed and dreary the
children's lives, that when Kitty reached the mature age of thirteen her
father, only too glad to banish the stranger from their midst, had given
in to her pleading, and with high hopes of a home which would be happy
and homelike once more, allowed her to become housekeeper and mistress
of the house.

Unfortunately, though, Kitty had had no training.  Her mother had been
an excellent manager; but Kitty was only a little thing when she lost
her, and her life had mostly been spent, happily enough, in nursery and
schoolroom.  Mrs. Trenire's wish had been that her children should have
a happy childhood, so all family troubles, all anxieties, domestic
worries and details, were kept from them, and the result was that,
beyond the nursery and schoolroom life, they knew nothing.  Kitty had
not the least idea how rooms were cleaned, or meals provided, or
anything.  Then had come the housekeeper, who for other reasons had kept
the children to their own quarters.  She resented any interference or
questioning, and objected to any trouble they might give her, but as
long as they amused themselves and kept out of her way, they were free
to do pretty much as they wished.

Under the circumstances it was not greatly to be wondered at that when
Kitty took up the reins of management, life at Dr. Trenire's was not
well-ordered and free from muddle, and that the doctor himself looked
worried, and sad, and careworn.

The pity of it was that Kitty did not try to learn even the very
simplest things in housekeeping, and in that lay the root of the trouble
and the cause of all that followed.  Though when four wild young
spirits, that have been bottled up and corked down for years, suddenly
find themselves free and able to do what they like when they like,
without having to render an account to any one, it would be rather
wonderful if they did settle down and become quite staid and steady all
at once.

Kitty it was, though, who was most at fault.  She had begged to be
allowed to manage the house, and, having got her wish, she just seized
the advantages and revelled in the freedom, but ignored the
responsibilities; and no one was more acutely aware of this fact than
was Kitty herself during the next half-hour, when their father talked so
gravely to them all in the schoolroom.

"I have been thinking a great deal," he said, as he dropped wearily into
the roomy old chair by the fireplace--the chair where their mother used
to sit and tell them stories, and hear them say their prayers before
they went to bed.  "I have thought over the whole situation, as well as
my tired brain will let me, and I have come to the conclusion that for
all our sakes I must get some one to come and look after us."

"O father!" gasped Kitty in utter dismay.  She had never thought that
anything as dreadful as this could happen.

"Evidently the management of the house and all of us is beyond Kitty,"
went on Dr. Trenire; "and that is not to be wondered at.  We are a large
family on the whole, and a doctor's house is not an ordinary one, and it
is not surprising that everything should have got into a state of muddle
and confusion."

Kitty felt, but could not say, that she had never really tried to manage
it; that as long as things had gone on without any open fiasco, and they
had been able to enjoy themselves, and the servants had not been
bad-tempered, she had been quite content.  She could not make that
confession now, and if she had it would not have done any good.

"The house _must_ be orderly and well managed, the meals properly
arranged and served, and the servants kept in order, and I should be
very culpable if I did not see that it was so," went on her father
slowly.  "So, after much thought and hesitation, for I am very reluctant
to admit even a comparative stranger into our midst again, I feel that
the only thing to be done is to write to your dear mother's cousin, Mrs.
Pike, and ask her to come and make her home with us.  She once offered
to, and I think now, if she is still willing, it will be well to accept
her kind offer."

A stifled cry of dismay broke from the four shocked listeners--a cry
they could not repress.  "Aunt Pike!"  Aunt Pike, of all people, to come
to live with them!  Oh, it was too dreadful!  It could not be--they
could never bear it!  She had stayed with them once for a fortnight, and
it might have been a year from the impression it had left on their
memories.  When she had left they had had a thanksgiving service in the
nursery, and Betty--solemn Betty--had prayed aloud, "From Aunt Pike,
pestilence, and famine, please deliver us."

And now this dreaded aunt was to be asked to come again--not for a
fortnight only, but for many fortnights; and not as a guest, but as head
and mistress of them all, to manage them, to order them about, to make
them do as she chose.  Oh, it was overwhelming, appalling, too appalling
to be  true!

"But there is Anna!" gasped Kitty.

"I know," said Dr. Trenire, who really felt nearly as bad about it as
did his children.  "Anna will live here too, probably.  Of course we
could not expect her mother to leave her."

This was the hardest blow, the final drop of bitterness their cup could
hold, the last straw on four overburthened camels.

"But we all hate Anna," said Betty with slow, deliberate emphasis;
"and we shall hate her more if she is here always, wanting to play with
us, and go about with us, and--and--"

"Betty, those remarks are unworthy of you," said her father gravely.

"But they are quite true, daddy," said Tony  solemnly, "and we've _got_
to speak the truth and shame the devil.  Jabez told us so."

Dr. Trenire did not feel able or inclined to argue the point then.
Betty drew nearer to him and leaned against his shoulder.  "Daddy," she
said in her grave, confiding way, "you won't like it either, a bit.
When Anna was here before you often used to say, 'Oh, that child!' and
you looked quite glad, as glad as we did, when she went away.  I am sure
you will be sorry if she comes, nearly as sorry as we shall be, only you
will be able to go your rounds and get away from them every day; but
we," pathetically, "can't do that."

Again Dr. Trenire was silent.  He sometimes wished his younger
daughter's memory was less acute, and her love of reasoning less strong.
No one spoke, and until some one did, remarks would go on dropping from
Betty's lips.  It was a way she had.  She had never been known to cease
talking without being forcibly made to do so.  "It does seem dreadful,"
she went on thoughtfully, "that just because Jabez got his head hit we
must have Aunt Pike and Anna here for ever and ever, and be made very
unhappy.  I am sure Jabez would rather have us punished in some other
way.  Shall I ask him what he would like done to us instead?" she
finished up eagerly.

"I don't want to punish you," said Dr. Trenire.  "Don't run away with
the idea, children, that I am doing it for that purpose.  It is that I
think it will be the best plan for all of us--for our comfort and
happiness, and your future good.  I can't have you all growing up like
savages, untrained, uneducated, uncared for.  What would you all say to
me when you grew up?" looking round at them with a smile.

"I would say, 'Thank you,'" said Betty gravely.

"I'd rather be a savage than anything," said Tony eagerly.

Kitty and Dan were silent.  Dan was old enough to realize something of
what his father meant; Kitty was altogether too upset to answer.
She was thinking that it was she who had brought all this on them; that
she might have saved them from it.  The others blamed Jabez and his
tale-bearing; but Kitty in her heart of hearts felt that Jabez with his
cut forehead and his tale of woe was but a last link in the long chain
which she had forged--a chain which was to grapple to them Aunt Pike and
the unwelcome Anna.  At the same time the injury to Jabez was a last
link, without which the chain might never have been completed.

It was completed though, for that their father's mind was made up, his
decision final, they recognized only too clearly, and the glorious
summer day turned suddenly to blackest, dreariest night for all of them.

By-and-by, though, after their father had left them, and they had talked
things over amongst themselves, some of Kitty's remorse gave way to a
rebellion against fate.  "How could they have known," she demanded
tragically, "that by just sitting on the garden wall that afternoon they
were changing and spoiling their lives for ever, and giving Aunt Pike
the chance she had been longing for, the chance of coming there to
'boss' them?  How was one to know what one might do and what one
mightn't?  What was the use of trying?  There was no going against
'fate'!  If it was their fate to have everything spoilt by her, she
would have come even if Jabez had never been hurt at all, and everything
had been quite right and perfect."

"I shall never sit on that old wall again without expecting something to
happen," said Betty in solemn tones.

"And you will never be disappointed after _she_ comes," Dan foreboded
gloomily, "so it is just as well to be prepared."  At which they all
groaned in miserable chorus.

By-and-by they straggled downstairs again and out into the yard.
The house was really unbearably hot, and seemed too small to allow their
minds to grasp all they had to grasp.  They had a sort of gloomy
longing, too, to revisit the spot where so much had happened, to go over
the familiar ground and see if the bright outer world looked different
at all; there surely must be some sign of the tragedy that had befallen
them.

In the outer world things had changed very much.  The sun had
disappeared, and the sky was heavy and overcast with threatenings of the
storm that had been brewing all the day; the old wall looked gray, and
sad, and uninviting.

"Just as though it knew," thought Kitty.

In the yard Prue was standing somewhat dejectedly, evidently waiting to
be harnessed; Jabez was creeping about, getting out the carriage in
preparation for a journey.  He looked quite imposing with his bandaged
head, and he was taking himself very seriously.  He glanced furtively at
the children, and bore himself with an air of patient but superior
resignation.  In his heart he was really vexed with himself for having
complained of them, though he felt it would not do to let them know it.

Betty, Dan, and Tony felt so bitterly the ill turn he had done them that
they walked through the yard and up into the garden without a word or a
glance--a cut on the forehead seemed so trifling compared with what they
had to bear.  Jabez, who had expected anger or teasing on their parts,
felt this coldness greatly; he was not used to that kind of treatment,
and it hurt him.  Kitty, though, was so struck by the sight of his
preparations that for the moment she forgot him and his injuries.

"Father hasn't to go out again to-night, has he, Jabez?" she asked
anxiously, staying behind while the others strolled on.

"Yes, miss, he hev.  He've got to go to Welland to once.  They've just
sent in."

"Are you going too?" looking at his bandaged head.

"No, miss," with a resigned air.  "Master says I'm to go 'ome and 'ave a
good night's rest--that is if so be as I can get to sleep."

"But who is going to drive father?" interrupted Kitty.

"Master said as 'ow he'd drive hisself."

Kitty remembered the weary look on her father's face, the sleepless
night he had had, the long, busy day.  "Jabez," she said with quiet
firmness, "I am going to drive father; then perhaps he will be able to
sleep a little in the carriage.  Don't say anything to him, but I'll be
in the carriage when you drive it round for him, and then I expect he
will let me go."

Jabez looked dubiously first at the sky and then at Kitty.

"I can drive; you know I can," she said eagerly.  "Now don't be nasty,
Jabez; we have got trouble enough as it is."

"'Tis my belief there's a nasty storm brewing--"

"I love a storm, especially when I am driving through it."

"I was putting in the old mare on purpose, 'cause she stands thunder and
lightning better than what Billy does, but--"

"Jabez, you may say what you like, but I am going, unless father stops
me; so don't bother to say any more about it.  I know the way, and
father trusts me to drive."

"I wasn't going against 'ee, Miss Kitty.  If you'm set on it you'm set
on it, and 'tisn't no manner of use for me to talk."

Dan and the others came sauntering down from the garden again.
"Jabez, you might give me the nail out of that bit of wood," said Dan;
"every half-ounce counts, and I want to get enough iron to sell."

Jabez shook his head knowingly.  He would rather not have had any
further reference made to the affair, for he was really devoted to them
all, and was ashamed of his part in it.  He always made a point, though,
of seeming to distrust them; he thought it safer.

"Ah, I ain't so sure," he began, "that it'd be wise of me to let 'ee
'ave it.  I dunno what more 'arm you mightn't be doing with it."

"We couldn't do more harm than you have done already," snapped Dan.
"You've nailed Aunt Pike fast to the house with it, and it will take
more than we can do to get her away again."

"What be saying of, sir?" asked Jabez, bewildered, and suddenly
realizing that their sombre faces and manner meant something more than
usual.  "Mrs. Pike--"

"Father is going to send and ask Aunt Pike to live here, and it's your
fault," said Betty concisely.  "It was your complaining about Dan that
did it."

Jabez gasped.  He knew the lady well, and preserved a vivid recollection
of her former visit.  "She hain't a-coming visiting here again, is she,
sur?" he groaned.

"Visiting!  It's much worse than that, a thousand times worse.  She is
coming here for good, to manage all of us--and you too!" they gasped.

Jabez dropped helpless on to an upturned bucket, the picture of hopeless
dejection.  "There won't be no peace in life no more," he said, "and I
shan't be allowed to show my nose in the kitchen.  I'd have had my old
'ead scat abroad every day of my life and never have told rather than
I'd have helped to do this.  Was it really me telling on 'ee, sur, that
made the master settle it so?"

"Yes," nodded Dan, "that finished it."

Jabez groaned again in sheer misery.  "I dunno, I'm sure, whatever made
me take and do it.  I've stood so much more from all of 'ee and never so
much as opened my lips.  I reckon 'twas the weather made me a bit
peppery like--"

"It was fate," interposed Kitty gravely.  "It must have been something,
for sure," breathed Jabez, with a dreary shake of his head.

"Make haste and get Prue harnessed," said Kitty, "or the storm will
begin before we start, and then father won't let me go;" and Jabez, with
another gloomy shake of his head, rose from the upturned bucket and
proceeded with his task.



CHAPTER III.


A DRIVE AND A SLICE OF CAKE.

With one thing and another Jabez was so agitated as to be quite
incapable of hurrying, and Kitty, who could harness or unharness a horse
as well as any one, had to help him.  She fastened the trace on one
side, buckled up the girths, and finally clambered up into the carriage
while Jabez was still fumbling with the bit and the reins.  She caught
the braid of her frock in the step as she mounted, and ripped down many
inches of it, but that did not trouble her at all.

"Have you got a knife in your pocket, Dan?" she asked calmly; and Dan
not only produced a knife, but hacked off the hanging braid for her and
threw it away.

"I do wish I could go too," said Betty wistfully.  "I'd love to drive
all over the downs at night, particularly if there was a storm coming.
May I come too, Kitty?"

But Kitty, for several reasons, vetoed the suggestion.  For one thing
she wanted to be alone with her father, to try her powers of argument
and persuasion against the summoning of Aunt Pike and Anna into their
midst; for another, she felt that to be driving in the dark, and
probably through a storm, was responsibility enough, without the care of
Betty added; and she felt, too, that though her father might be induced
to let one of them go with him, he would, under such circumstances,
shrink from the pleasure of their united company.

"No, Bet," she answered firmly, "you can't come to-night.  I--I want to
talk things over with father;  but," with sudden inspiration, "I tell
you what you can do, and it would be awfully sweet of you.  You coax
Fanny to get something very nice for supper by the time we come home,
and see that Emily has the table properly laid, and that the glasses are
clean, and that there are knives enough, and--oh, you know, all sorts of
things."

"I know," said Betty, quite as delighted with the responsibility thrust
on her as she would have been with permission to go for the drive.

Dr. Trenire came out presently with some letters in his hand, which he
gave to Jabez.  "Post those without fail," he said, then mounted to his
seat.  He was so absorbed, or bothered, or tired, that he did not at
first observe Kitty's presence, or, at any rate, object to it; and when
he did notice her, all he said was, "O Kitty, are you going to drive me?
That is very good of you; but isn't it rather late for you?"

"No, father," said Kitty, relieved by his tone.  "I love driving by
night, and I--I thought it would rest you to have some one to drive.
Perhaps you will be able to have a nap on the way."

"I shouldn't be surprised if I did," said her father, with a smile.
"I feel as though my head is asleep already.  Have we got the lamps?"

"Yes, I think everything is right," and, gathering up the reins, off she
drove down through the street.

Every one they met smiled and saluted them in some way, and Kitty smiled
back, well pleased.  To be perched up on the box-seat, with the reins in
her hand, in a position of real trust, gave her the happiest thrills
imaginable.  Horses, and riding and driving, were passions with her.

At the bottom of the street they branched to their left, and went more
slowly up a steep hill, which wound on and on, gradually growing steeper
and steeper, past villas and cottages and pretty gardens, until at last
all dwellings were left behind, and only hedges bordered the wide road;
and then  the hedges were passed too, and they were out on the open
downs with miles of rough level grassland stretching away on either side
of them, broken only by the flat white road along which they rolled so
easily.

Up here, on this height, with nothing to intercept it, a little breeze
met them.  It was a very faint little breeze, but it was refreshing.
Kitty drew in deep breaths of it with pleasure, for the closeness and
thunderousness of the atmosphere were very trying.  The sky overhead
looked heavy and angry, black, with a dull red glow burning through here
and there, while a hot mist veiled the horizon.

For a time they drove on without speaking, Prue's regular footfalls, the
noise of the wheels, and the sharp, clear calls of the birds alone
breaking the silence.  Kitty was thinking deeply, trying to summon
courage to make her earnest, final appeal, and wondering how to begin.

"Father," she began at last, "I--I wish you would give us one more
chance--trial, I mean.  We would try to behave better, really we would;
and--and I will do my best to look after the house and the servants
properly.  I am sure I can if I try.  There shall always be hot water,
and--well, you see I feel it is all my fault, and I have brought it all
on the others--"

Dr. Trenire came back with a start from his drowsy musings, and tried to
gather what it was that his daughter was saying, for she was rather
incoherent.  Her voice shook at first with nervousness.  "Eh, what?" he
stammered.

It was disconcerting to Kitty to find that he had not been taking in a
word of what it had cost her such an effort to say.  "I will do my best
to look after the house and the servants," she repeated desperately,
"if--"

"But I am afraid, child, you really don't know how.  It is not in anger,
Kitty, that I am making this new arrangement.  I am doing it because I
feel you have a task entirely beyond your power, and for all your sakes
I must see that you have an orderly and comfortable home, and--"

"It won't be _comfortable_," said Kitty pathetically.  "It will never be
that any more."

"You must not begin by being prejudiced against your aunt," reasoned her
father gently.

"I am not, father, really; we are not prejudiced," she answered; "but we
know, and--and every one else knows that--that--well, when I told Jabez
what was going to happen, he sat down on a bucket and he looked--he
looked at first as though he were going to faint, and then as though he
would leave.  I feel nearly certain he will not stay, I really do,
father.  Aunt Pike was always down on him."

Dr. Trenire felt a little uneasy.  He hated changes amongst his servants
when once he had grown used to them, and Jabez was a faithful and
valuable one in spite of his peculiarities.  "You should have thought of
all this sooner," he said, rather crossly, "and not have made such a
step necessary."

"But--but, father, if we promise now, and really mean it, and begin at
once, and--and--" Kitty was so excited she could hardly get her words
out, for she had quickly caught the signs of wavering in her father's
voice and manner.  Already she felt as though victory were near.
"Anyhow, father, give us six months, or even three months more, just to
let us show that--"

With an exclamation, Dr. Trenire leaned forward and pulled the right
rein sharply.  "Take care, child," he cried; "you will have us over in
a moment.  You have almost got this wheel over the edge of the ditch.
You _must_ learn to attend to the business in hand, or you will never
succeed in anything.  Another inch and you would have upset us, and
probably have broken a spring."

Dr. Trenire's nerves were on edge, and he spoke more sharply than was
usual with him.  Kitty felt that she had made a bad beginning, her
spirits sank, and she lapsed into silence.  But when they were once more
bowling smoothly along, her father's thoughts returned to her appeal.

"I am afraid it is too late now," he said gently, sorry for his
momentary irritability.  "I have already written to your aunt."

Kitty turned a stricken face to him, and her hold of the reins loosened
again.  "Written to Aunt Pike--already!" she gasped.  "Oh!"  But hope
rose again a moment later.  "But you haven't posted it?"

"Yes, I have.  At least, I gave it, with some others, to Jabez to post.
It will have gone by the time we reach home."

"Oh, how dreadful!"  Kitty's fingers tightened on the reins.
Her impulse was to turn and drive back furiously to try and intercept
that fatal letter.  "Father, do let me just drive quickly back and stop
it," she pleaded; but her father shook his head.

"I must get on to see Sir James as speedily as I can.  It would take us
nearly an hour to go home and reach this far again; the old gentleman
would think I wasn't coming to-night.  Look at the sky, too; we must try
and get to Welland, if not home again, before the storm bursts.  It will
be a bad one when it comes, and anything but pleasant or safe to be
driving through over an exposed road such as this; and even now I am
afraid it will be dark before we get home."

Kitty knew that; but everything seemed trifling in comparison with this
affair of Aunt Pike, and she drove on in a state of mutiny and misery
very hard to bear, until by-and-by another comforting thought came to
her.  If she could not recall that letter, perhaps she could induce her
father to write another to her aunt, telling her that after all he had
made other arrangements, and that there was no occasion to trouble her.
She would not say anything about it now though, and presently other
things occurred which helped to banish for the moment this particular
trouble from her mind.

By the time they reached Welland it was very nearly dark, and Kitty felt
not a little nervous as she guided Prue through the gate leading into
the Manor grounds; for the turning was an awkward one, and the gate not
wide.  She managed it, however, and drove along the drive and drew up
before the door in quite a masterly fashion.

"I had better light the lamps by the time you come out," she said to her
father as he got down from the carriage; but before he could tell her
that One of the stablemen would probably come and see to the lamps and
Prue too, the hall door was opened by an anxious-faced maid.

"We are glad you have come, sir," she exclaimed.  "The master seems very
bad, and the mistress is very anxious."

"I will be with your master in a moment," said the doctor cheerfully;
then, turning again to Kitty, "Hadn't you better come inside, dear?
You--"

"Oh no," cried shy Kitty, to whom the suggestion was full of horror.
"Oh no.  I would _much_ rather stay here, please, father.  It is cooler
now, and I am very comfortable;" and Dr. Trenire, understanding her
nature, let her have her way, and followed the impatient maid to the
sickroom.

Kitty, greatly relieved, was fastening the reins to the splashboard
before getting down to light the lamps, when a man appeared around the
corner of the house, and came towards her.

"You had better go inside, miss, hadn't you?" he said, speaking as
though he were bidding her to go rather than asking her a question.
"I'll look after the mare."

"Thank you," said Kitty decisively, "I would rather stay here."

"I think we'm going to have a storm, and you'll get wet through before
the doctor comes out.  I reckon he'll be some time."

Kitty felt strongly inclined to say she would like nothing better than
to get wet through, and that she preferred sitting out in a storm to
anything else in the world.  Why couldn't people let her do as she liked
best?  It seemed to her that it was only for her to want to do one
thing, for every one to conspire to make her do another.  And how
aggravating it was to have the man glued to Prue's bridle all the time,
as though Prue ever needed holding, or Kitty were absolutely incapable!
He was not at all a pleasant man; he spoke very sulkily and never
smiled.  She wished for his departure even more fervently than he, she
felt, was wishing for hers, but she could not summon up courage to tell
him to go, nor could she get over her irritation with him sufficiently
to talk to him.  So there they stayed in gloomy silence, and Kitty, to
add to her annoyance, was made to feel that she was acting foolishly,
and ought to have done what she particularly objected to doing.

"Oh!"

A sudden vivid flash of lightning drew the exclamation from her, and
made even quiet old Prue toss her head; and immediately after the flash
came a violent peal of thunder just above their heads, so violent that
it seemed as though the heavens themselves were being rent and shaken
and the house tumbling about them.  Then came a quick patter, patter,
patter, swish, swish, and a storm of rain descended on them.

"If you'll get out, miss, and go into the house, I'll take the mare and
the carriage round and put them under shelter, or the cushions and
things'll be soaking wet by the time the doctor comes out."

There was a tone in the man's voice that Kitty could not ignore, though
she disliked him intensely for it--the more so, perhaps, because she
felt that he was in the right.  He addressed her as though she were a
little wilful child, whose foolishness he had endured for some time, but
was not going to endure any longer.

Kitty was _so_ annoyed that for a moment she felt that nothing would
induce her to dismount, and that if he chose to put the carriage under
shelter he could take her there along with it; but the prospect of
having to endure his society the whole time made her pause, and while
she paused the hall door was opened, and a lady appeared, peering out
into the darkness.  Standing outlined against the lighted hall Kitty
could see her distinctly, while she, her eyes  dazzled for the moment by
the light, could see nothing.

"Did Dr. Trenire bring one of his little girls with him, Reuben?"

"Yes'm."

"Do come in at once, child.  Which is it?  Kitty?"

"Yes," answered Kitty reluctantly.

"Then do come in.  Whatever makes you stay out in the storm?" cried Lady
Kitson.

Kitty obediently, but most unwillingly, scrambled down from her seat.
Even from the carriage, and through the darkness, she could see how
charming and dainty Lady Kitson was looking.  She had on a soft, flowing
gray silk gown, with white lace about her shoulders and arms, and her
beautiful golden hair gleamed brightly in the lamplight.  Kitty, at
sight of her, suddenly realized with overwhelming shame that in her zeal
to drive her father and make her appeal, she had neither brushed her own
hair nor washed her hands, nor changed her old garden hat or morning
frock.  She was, she knew, as disreputable-looking and untidy a daughter
as any father could feel ashamed of.

"How stupid of me--how stupid of me," she thought, full of vexation with
herself, "when I knew I was coming here, too."

There was nothing to be done, though, but to go in and live through this
ordeal as best she might.  "Why do these things always happen to me?"
she groaned miserably.  "If I had wanted very much to go in, and had had
on all new beautiful clothes, I should have been left out here to spoil
them.  I wish father would come; he must have been gone quite half an
hour, I am sure, and Sir James can't want him any longer."

In the hall Lady Kitson held out a delicate white hand, with sparkling
rings on her fingers, and took Kitty's grubby one in hers.  Some persons
might not have noticed the roughness and stains and marks made by the
reins, but Kitty knew that Lady Kitson did.  Her keen eyes missed
nothing, and probably before very long she would be retailing to Dr.
Trenire all his daughter's shortcomings, and the crying necessity for
sending her away to a good boarding-school at once.

None of the Trenire children liked Lady Kitson, though they could hardly
have told you why.  Poor Kitty felt now that she disliked her
exceedingly.

"Come into the drawing-room; the girls are there."

"The girls" were Lady Kitson's step-daughters.  They were both of them
older than Kitty, but were inclined to be very friendly.  The Trenire
children, though, did not respond much to their advances; they found
them uninteresting and silly, and never felt at home with them.
The truth was, they had no tastes in common, and probably never would
have.

Kitty felt glad of their presence now though, for anything would be
better, she thought, than to have to sit for a long time with Lady
Kitson alone.  At least she felt glad until, having been directed to a
low easy-chair facing them all, she suddenly caught sight of the two
jagged ends of braid hanging from the front breadth of her dress--the
braid Dan had hacked off with his knife.  Both ends hung down two or
three inches, and no eye could avoid seeing them.  From them her glance
travelled to her shabby old shoes, the spots on her frock, her hands.
Her face flushed a fiery red and her eyes filled.  Not for any
consideration could she at that moment have raised her eyes.  She knew,
she felt those gimlet glances, the looks and meaning smiles that were
being exchanged, and she writhed under them, while her heart felt very
full and sore.  She could not talk, her mind was weighed down.  In her
embarrassment she could think of nothing to say, and her hostesses were
apparently too absorbed to make an effort either.  Moment after moment
of overwhelming wretchedness dragged by.

"I shall never, never forget this," thought Kitty, "all the rest of my
life.  It will make me miserable whenever I think of it."

At last, to every one's relief, Lady Kitson went upstairs to join her
husband, and with her departure some, at least, of the stiffness was
removed.

"Aren't you hungry?" asked Lettice, the elder of the two girls.
"I am sure you must be after that long drive."

"No, thank you," said Kitty soberly.

"Oh, I think you must be.--Maude, do go and ask Parkin to give us some
cake for Kitty.  Be sure and say it is for Kitty."

"Can't you go yourself?" asked Maude.  "Parkin is in a fearful temper
with me because I told mother about her giving things to Reuben."

"Bother!  You are always rubbing the servants the wrong way.  I let them
do as they like, for the sake of keeping them amiable.  I am awfully
hungry, and so is Kitty, if she would only admit it; but if she refuses
to, I suppose I must go hungry."

"We shall have dinner soon," said Maude sharply.  "I should think you
could wait until then."

"I will have some cake, if you really want me to," said Kitty, looking
up at Lettice with a smile, the first she had been able to call to her
lips.  She liked Lettice the better of the two girls.

"Will you?" cried Lettice delightedly.  "Then I will go and ask for
something nice for you.  I am sure Parkin will give me something if I
promise her my little pansy brooch;" and off she went, returning a
moment later with a plateful of huge slices of orange cake.

Kitty looked at the slices in dismay.  "I can't eat a whole one," she
said.  "I shouldn't have time either, for I expect father will be down
soon."

"Nonsense! you must.  There is no knife to cut them smaller," cried
Lettice, already making marked inroads on a slice herself.  "Quick, take
some, or I shall drop the plate."

Kitty unwillingly did as she was told, only to regret it bitterly as, at
the first mouthful, a shower of crumbs descended on the polished floor.
After that experience it took her so long to make up her mind to take a
second bite, that just as she did so voices were heard outside the door,
the handle was turned, and Lady Kitson, followed by Dr. Trenire, entered
the room.  At the first sounds Lettice had seized the plate of cake and
made a hasty exit through the conservatory, but for Kitty there was no
such escape.

"Well, dear, are you ready to face the storm?" asked her father, smiling
down at her.

"I think I must lend you a wrap of some sort," said Lady Kitson.
"I suppose you have none?"

Kitty, her mouth full of cake and one hand grasping the remainder, tried
to swallow it hastily that she might reply, and, of course, choked.
As she often remarked afterwards, the misery of that visit would not
have been complete without that final blow.  Covered with shame and
confusion, she rose awkwardly from her chair, looking about her for some
place whereon to deposit that dreadful cake.  There was none.
The tables were covered with books and frames, vases and ornaments, but
the vases were full of flowers, and there was not even a friendly
flower-pot saucer.  There was nothing for her to do but carry it with
her.

"Don't hurry," said Lady Kitson politely; "stay and finish your cake."

"I can't," said Kitty desperately.

She could not even say "thank you."  In fact, there seemed so little to
give thanks for that it never entered her head to do so.

"Then we will start at once," said her father briskly; and to her
immense relief she soon found herself, her farewells said, mounting once
more the dear homely carriage.  With the reins between her fingers, and
the responsibility on her of driving through the storm and darkness,
some of her courage and self-respect returned, but not until she had
flung that wretched cake far from her into the darkness.

"I shall hate orange cakes all the rest of my life," she thought.

"It was kind of Lady Kitson to take you in out of the storm," remarked
her father absently.

"Was it?" she questioned doubtfully.  "I suppose it was.  But--another
time I--I would rather stay out in the very worst storm that ever was,"
she added mentally.  "Nothing _could_ be worse than what I have gone
through, and what I shall feel whenever I remember it."



CHAPTER IV.


STORMS AT HOME AND ABROAD.

Time might soften Kitty Trenire's recollections of that embarrassing
visit of hers, but it could never dim her remembrance of the drive home
that night over that wide expanse of moorland which stretched away black
and mysterious under a sky which glowed like a furnace, until both were
illuminated by lightning so vivid that one could but bow the head and
close the eyes before it.  A gusty wind, which had sprung up suddenly,
chased the carriage all the way, while the rain, which came down in
sheets, hissing as it struck the ground, thundered on the hood drawn
over their heads, but left their vision clear to gaze in wondering awe
at the marvels which surrounded them.

Dr. Trenire presently took the reins from Kitty, and tucking her well up
in the wrap that had been lent her, left her free to gaze and gaze her
fill.  Prue did not relish the din and uproar in the heavens, the
flashing lightning, or the rain beating on her; but though she shook her
head and flapped her long ears in protest, she stepped out bravely.

When they came at last to the houses and the more shut-in roads the wild
beauty was less impressive, and Kitty's thoughts turned with pleasure to
home and dry clothes, and the nice meal Betty had undertaken to have in
readiness for them.  How jolly it all was, and how she did love her
home, and the freedom and comfort of it.

The first sight of the house, though, decidedly tended to damp her
pleasant anticipations, for there was not a light to be seen anywhere.
All the windows were gaping wide to the storm, while from more than one
a bedraggled curtain hung out wet and dirty.

Dr. Trenire drove straight in to the stable-yard, expecting to have to
groom down and stable Prue himself.  But Jabez had changed his mind
about going home and early to bed, and was there ready to receive them.
At the sight of his bandaged head Kitty's thoughts flew to the events of
the day, to Aunt Pike and the fatal letter, and she simply ached with
anxiety to know if Jabez had posted it or not.

While she was waiting for an opportunity to ask him Dr. Trenire solved
the difficulty for her.

"Have you posted those letters I gave you, Jabez?" he asked, with, as it
seemed to Kitty, extraordinary calm.

"Oh yes, sir," said Jabez cheerfully, very proud of himself for his
unusual promptness.  "I went down with 'em to once.  When there's a
hubbub on in the kitchen I'm only too glad to clear out."

For once Dr. Trenire did not appear particularly pleased with his
assiduity, and Kitty turned dejectedly away.  The letter, the fatal
letter, was gone, her hopes were ended, fate was too strong for them.
And to add to her trouble there had been a hubbub in the kitchen, which
meant a quarrel.  Oh dear, what could be the matter now?  Emily was in a
bad temper again, she supposed.  Emily generally was.

As she went up to her room to change she met Emily coming down, and
whatever else she might be in doubt about, she was in none as to the
signs on Emily's face.  It was at "very stormy," and no mistake.

"I am wet through," said Kitty brightly, hoping to smooth away the
frown; "but oh it was grand to see the storm across the downs.
I did enjoy it."

But Emily was not to be cajoled into taking an interest in anything.
"I'm glad somebody's been able to enjoy themselves," she said pertly,
and walked away down the stairs.

Poor Kitty's brightness vanished.  Was there never to be anything but
worry and unpleasantness?  All her excitement, and interest, and
hopefulness evaporated, leaving her depressed and dispirited.
The memory rushed over her of former home-comings, before the dear
mother died; the orderly comfort, the cheerfulness and joy which seemed
always to be a part of the house in those days; and her eyes grew misty
with the ache and loneliness of her heart, and the sense of failure
which weighed her down.  There rose before her that dear, happy face,
with the bright smile and the ready interest that had never failed her.

"O mother, mother," she cried, "I want you so, I want you so!
Everything is wrong, and I can't get them right.  I am no use to any
one, and I--I don't know how to do better."

The hot tears were brimming up and just about to fall over, when flying
footsteps sounded on the stairs--Betty's footsteps.  Kitty closed the
door of her room, though she knew it was of no use.  It was Betty's room
too, and nothing, certainly not a mere hint, could keep Betty out; and
she sighed, as she had often sighed before, for a room of her very own,
for some place where she could be alone sometimes to think, or read, or
make plans, or hide when the old heartache became too much for her.

But Betty shared her room, and Betty had every right to walk in, and
Betty did so.  She was quiet, and vouchsafed no account of her doings,
but she was quite calm and unperturbed.

"What has made Emily in such a bad temper?" asked Kitty wearily.

"Emily always is in a bad temper, isn't she?" asked Betty placidly.
"I don't take any notice of her."  Then with some slight interest,
"What did she say to you?"

"She didn't _say_ anything," answered Kitty, "but she looked temper, and
walked temper, and breathed temper.  Have you got a nice supper for us?
I am starving, and I am sure father must be."

Betty did not answer enthusiastically; in fact, she gave no real answer
at all, but merely remarked in an off-hand manner, "I shouldn't have
thought any one could want much to eat in this weather."

"Is it ready?"

"I don't know."

"Well, will you go down and see, and tell them to take it in at once if
they haven't done so? I know father wants his supper."

"I--think," said Betty thoughtfully, "--p'r'aps you had better go
yourself.  Fanny said--Fanny's manners are awful; I think father ought
to send them both away--"

"What did Fanny say?"

"Fanny told me--well, she said she would rather I--didn't go into the
kitchen again--yet."

Kitty groaned.  "What have you done to vex them both so, Betty?"

"I only tried to see that the table was nicely laid, and everything just
as you told me; and because I took out all the glasses and told Emily
they were dirty, she got as cross as anything; and they really were
dirty, for I showed her all the finger-marks, so it wasn't as if I was
complaining about nothing.  If I'd 'cused her wrongly I shouldn't wonder
at her getting mad; but I hadn't, and she couldn't deny it.  The forks
were dirty too; at least I showed her six that were."

Without any comment Kitty left the room and descended to the kitchen.
All the way she went she was dreading what she should find when she got
there, and wondering how she should best approach matters, and it was a
relief to her on opening the kitchen door to find that Fanny was alone.
Fanny was looking cross enough at that moment to daunt any ordinary
courage, but, somehow, Kitty never felt as alarmed of her as of Emily.

"Well, Fanny," she began, intending to ignore the hints and rumours that
had reached her, "we have got back.  We were wet through nearly, and now
father and I are longing for our supper.  Have you got something very
nice for us?"  She tried to speak cheerfully, but it cost her a great
effort.

Fanny took up the poker and made an attack on the stove.  "You never
ordered nothing, Miss Kitty, and 'tisn't my place to say what you should
have."

"Oh but, Fanny, you generally do," said Kitty, half inclined to be
indignant at Fanny's injustice, for she could not help remembering how
Fanny, as a rule, resented any attempt on her part to order or arrange
the meals.  She knew, though, that her only chance now was to be
patient, and to ignore a good many things.  "And you manage so well, so
much better than I can."  She felt she must say something to restore
peace and amiability, if they were to have any supper at all that night,
and not incur greater disgrace than she had already.

"I don't want to boast," said Fanny, "'tisn't my nature to do so, but if
I'm gived a free hand, well--I can turn out a passable meal; but when
one doesn't like this and the other doesn't like that, and nothing I do
is right, and there's nothing but rows and squabblings in the kitchen,
and no peace nowhere--well, I gives it all up!  P'r'aps somebody else
could manage better."

Fanny's voice rose more and more shrilly.  Poor Kitty's head by this
time was aching badly, and her nerves were all on edge.  "Fanny, what
_is_ the matter?" she asked despairingly.  "What has happened while
we've been away?  I thought we were coming home to a nice comfortable
meal and a happy evening, and when we drive up the house is all dark,
and the rain beating in at the windows.  Emily is in a fury, and--and oh
it is all so miserable.  I--I'd rather be out alone on the downs in the
storm without any home at all, or--or--"  Here Kitty's voice faltered,
and once more the tears brimmed up in her eyes--a most unusual
occurrence with her; but the events of the day, the storm, and the
difficulties that beset her, were proving too much for her.

Fanny, hearing the break in her voice, looked round quickly, just in
time to see the tears, the white, tired face, and the look of dejection.
"Why, Miss Kitty," she cried, her soft heart touched at once, "don't 'ee
take it like that.  Why, 'tisn't nothing to fret about; it'll all come
right again, my dear," and she put her big red arm round her little
mistress, and drew her head down to rest on her shoulder.  But Kitty,
completely overcome now, shook her head mournfully.

"No, it won't, Fanny; it is too late now.  Aunt Pike is to come and live
here to look after us.  Father says we must have some one, and--and I
think he is right.  I don't seem able to manage things, everything goes
just as I don't want it to," and the tears brimmed over again and fell
on Fanny's shoulder.

"Mrs. Pike!" gasped Fanny.  "Mrs.--Pike--coming here--for good!  Oh my!
Miss Kitty, you don't really mean it!"

"Yes, I do," groaned Kitty.  "It is really true.  Father has written to
her, and--oh I never dreamed such a thing _could_ happen, or I would
have tried and tried to be more careful.  It must be fate, though, as
well as our bad managing, for I've never before known Jabez post a
letter when he was told to; but he must have gone right down to the post
at once with the one to Aunt Pike that sealed all our fates.  If he
hadn't I do believe I could have got father not to send it, or at least
to give us another chance."

Fanny shook her head solemnly.  "It do seem like it," she groaned.

"What has happened while I have been out, Fanny?  Has Betty been rude to
Emily?"

"Well, you see, Miss Kitty," said Fanny, anxious to tell, but softened
sufficiently to wish to make the best of the matter, "Miss Betty is so
tackless.  Emily's temper really wasn't so bad till Miss Betty kep' on
with her.  So soon as Emily had put the things on the table for supper,
Miss Betty 'd bring them all out again one by one, and put them down
before Emily, and every time she'd say, in that way she's got, 'Emily,
that glass is filthy; you must wash it at once.  I wonder you ain't
ashamed to lay the things in such a state.'  When she brought out the
third lot Emily got mad, and when Miss Betty come out with the forks
too--well, the storm bursted.  Emily was cheeky, I don't deny, and Miss
Betty was rude, and I had to tell 'em at last that they must go out of
the kitchen if they was likely to go on like that.  I wasn't going to
have my place turned into a bear-garden."

"Emily shouldn't have put down dirty things," said Kitty, loyal to her
sister.  "She is always doing it, and she ought to know better."
Her sympathies were all with Betty.  She may have been "tackless," as
Fanny called it, but however kindly Emily had been told of her
carelessness she would have been certain to fly into a rage; and they
had put up with so much from her without complaining, that no one could
accuse them of being fidgety or captious.

As a matter of fact, Emily, who needed a very firm mistress of whom she
would stand in awe, should have been sent away long before.  Kitty could
not manage her at all, and as she thought of all they had endured daily
at Emily's hands, she felt almost thankful that soon the management of
her would fall to Aunt Pike's lot.

"Did you say, Miss Kitty, that the master had asked Mrs. Pike to come
here to live altogether, to look after us?"

Kitty nodded despairingly.  After all, the managing of Emily seemed but
a very trifling advantage to weigh against the Pike invasion and all
that would follow on it.  "O Fanny," she sighed brokenly, "if only--if
only mother were alive!  Nothing has gone right since, nor ever will
again; and I feel it is almost all my fault that Aunt Pike has got to
come, and--and--"

"Now don't take on like that, Miss Kitty," said Fanny, sniffing audibly,
and not entirely able to throw off a sense of her own guilt in the
matter.  "'Tisn't nothing to do with you, I'm sure.  If things _'as_ to
be, they _'as_ to be, and we'll manage some'ow.  I'm going to set about
getting a nice supper so soon as ever I can.  I think we'm all low with
the thunder and the 'eat, and we'll be better when we've had some food.
Now don't 'ee fret any more, that's a dear," and she wiped Kitty's eyes
and then her own on her very soiled apron, but Kitty bore it gladly for
the sake of the warm heart that beat beneath the soiled bib.

"Thank you, Fanny; you are a dear," she said gratefully; "and I will go
and light some lights about the house by the time father has done with
that patient he has in with him now."

Kitty had a great idea of making the house bright and cheerful, but in
her zeal she forgot the heat of the night.

"Phew! my word!" gasped Dr. Trenire as he came presently to the
dining-room.  "Why, children, how can you breathe in this atmosphere?
I have been turning down the gas all the way I've come.  But how nice
the table is looking, and how good something is smelling.  I want some
supper pretty badly; don't you, little woman?" with a friendly pull at
Kitty's curls.

Kitty was not hungry now, but she was delighted by her father's
appreciation, and she cut the bread very zealously, and passed him
everything she thought he could want.  It was not until she had done all
that that the silence and the emptiness of the table struck her.
"Why, where is Dan?" she cried.

"And where is Anthony?" asked Anthony's father.

Betty gave a little jump, but as quickly controlled herself again.  "Oh,
I'd quite forgotten about him," she said calmly.  "Tony is in bed."

"In bed?" cried Dr. Trenire and Kitty at the same moment.  "Isn't he
well?"

None of them had ever been sent to bed for being naughty, so that
illness was the only explanation that occurred to them.

"Oh yes, he is all right; but I made him get under the feather-bed
because of the lightning--"

"The what?"

"The lightning.  They say it can't strike you if you are covered with
feathers, and of course I didn't want it to strike Tony, speshally with
nobody here but me to--to take the 'sponsibility," looking at her father
with the most serious face imaginable.  "So I made him get into the
spare-room bed, 'cause it's a feather-bed, and then I put all the
eider-downs over him, and I expect he's as safe as can be."

Dr. Trenire gave a low whistle and started to his feet.
"Very thoughtful of you, child," he said, trying not to smile, "and I
expect Tony is safe enough, if he isn't cooked or suffocated.  For my
part, I should prefer the risk to such a protection in this weather.
I'll go and rescue him."  But Kitty had already flown.

"I forgot to tell Kitty," went on Betty thoughtfully, "that I think the
moths have got into the eider-downs, such a lot of them flew out when I
moved the quilts."

Dr. Trenire groaned.  "I suppose the quilts have never been attended to
or put away since we ceased to use them?"

"No," said Betty gravely.  "You see, if they are on the spare-room bed
they are all out in readiness for when we want them."

"And for the moths when they want them," sighed her father.  "I expect
they will not leave much for us."

Kitty, her father's half-jesting words filling her with a deep alarm,
had meanwhile raced up to the spare room.  Somehow, on this dreadful
day, anything seemed possible, certainly anything that was terrible, and
she remembered suddenly that the spare bedroom was the very hottest room
in the house.  It was over the kitchen, and caught every possible gleam
of sunshine from morning till evening.  Also she knew Betty's
thoroughness only too well, and her mind's eye saw poor little Tony
buried deep and tucked in completely, head and all.

The whole house was stiflingly hot.  Kitty's own face grew crimson with
her race upstairs, and when she opened the door of the spare bedroom the
heat positively poured out; but a terrible load was lifted from her
mind, for, mercifully, Tony's head was uncovered.  He was the colour of
a crimson peony, it is true, but at any rate he was not suffocated,
unless--Kitty stepped quickly forward and touched his cheek.  It almost
made her sick with dread to do so; but the red cheek was very, very hot
and lifelike to the touch, and at the same moment Tony opened a y pair
of large sleepy eyes, and stared up at his sister wonderingly.

"I'm not struck, am I?" he asked half nervously.  "I am very hot, Kitty.
Is it the lightning?"

"No," said Kitty cheerfully, "it is feathers," and she flung back the
pile of quilts.  "Poor Tony.  Get up, dear, and come down and have some
supper.  It is all ready, and father was wondering where you were."

Tony slipped with grateful obedience from his protection and followed
Kitty, but rather languidly, it is true, for he was very hot and
exhausted, and very rumpled, all but his sweet temper, which was quite
unruffled.

"Is Dan come back?" he asked eagerly, as he crept slowly down the
stairs.

"Dan!" cried Kitty, stopping and looking back at him anxiously.
She remembered again then that she had not seen Dan since her return.
"Did he go out?"

"Yes, he went to catch some fishes for daddy's supper.  He heard you
tell Betty to have a nice one ready, and he said, 'There's sure to be
nothing nice in the house; there never is.  I'll go and catch some
trout,' and he went.  Do you think he was out in all that funder and
lightning?"  Then, seeing Kitty's startled look, Tony grew frightened
too.  "You don't fink he is hurt, do you, Kitty?" he asked anxiously.
"You don't fink Dan has been struck, do you?"

But at that moment, to their intense relief, Dan himself crossed the
hall.  From his appearance he might have been actually in the stream,
getting the trout out without rod or line.  Water was running off his
hat, his clothes, and his boots.  Tony heard it squishing with every
step he took, and thought how splendid and manly it seemed.

Kitty called out to him, but Dan did not stay to talk.

"Where's father?" he asked, turning a very flushed but very triumphant
face towards them, and waving his basket proudly.

"In the dining-room," said Kitty, and Dan hastened on.  His face fell a
little, though, when he saw the table, and his father already eating.

"I'm awfully sorry I'm late," he said disappointedly.  "I thought I
should have been in heaps of time.  I've got you some jolly fine trout,
father.  I meant them for your supper.  Just look!  Aren't they
beauties?" and he thrust his basket over the table and held it right
under his father's nose.  The mud and green slime dripped on tablecloth
and silver and on the bread, and even on Dr. Trenire's plate and the
food he was eating.

The doctor's much-tried patience gave way at last.  "Look at the mess
you are making--all over my food too!  Look at the filth you have
brought in!" he exclaimed angrily.  "Take it away! take it away!
What do you mean by coming into the room in that condition, bringing a
filthy thing like that and pushing it under my very nose when you see I
am eating?  And why, Dan, once more, are you not here and decently neat,
when a meal is ready?  It is perfectly disgraceful.  Here am I, and
supper has been on the table I don't know how long, and only one of you
is ready to sit down with me.  Anthony is in bed, or somewhere else,
Kitty is racing the house to find him, and you--I am ashamed of you,
sir, for coming into a room in such a condition.  You are perfectly
hopeless.  Here, take away my plate, take everything; you have quite
spoilt my appetite.  I couldn't eat another mouthful at such a table!"
and Dr. Trenire rose in hot impatience and flung out of the room.

For a second Dan seemed unable to believe his ears, then without a word
he closed his basket and walked away.  He was more deeply hurt than he
had ever been in his life before, and his face showed it.  Kitty and
Tony, hesitating in the hall, saw it, and their eyes filled with tears.
"Throw it away, will you?" he said in a choked voice, holding out the
unfortunate basket to Kitty.

Kitty, knowing how she would have felt under similar circumstances, took
it without looking at him; instinctive delicacy told her not to.
"Father didn't mean it," she whispered consolingly.  "You will come down
and have some supper when you have changed, won't you?"

They were not a demonstrative family; in fact, any lavishly expressed
sympathy or affection would have embarrassed them; but they understood
each other, and most of them possessed in a marked degree the power of
expressing both feelings without a word being spoken.

Dan understood Kitty, but it was too soon to be consoled yet.  "No," he
said bitterly, "I have had supper enough, thank you," and hurried away
very fast.

It really did seem as if Kitty was not to reach the Supper-table that
night.  Telling Tony to go in and begin his meal, she flew off with the
basket, and, heedless of anything but Dan's request, was just about to
fling it away--fish, basket, and all--when she paused.  It was a very
good basket, and Dan had no other.  Kitty hesitated, then opened it and
looked in.  Six fine trout lay at the bottom on a bed of bracken and wet
moss, evidently placed so that they could look their best.
The sight of Dan's little arrangements brought the tears to her eyes.
No, she could not throw away what he had taken so much pride in.

She turned back and went to the kitchen.  "Fanny," she said, "will you
cook these for father's breakfast?  Dan has caught them for him."

"And fine and proud he was too," said Fanny, looking in at Dan's catch.

"He was, but he isn't now.  I wish," with a deep sigh, "we didn't always
do things the wrong way.  I wonder why nothing ever comes quite right
with us?"  Then she turned away hastily, that Emily, who at that moment
came into the kitchen, might not see the tears that would start to her
eyes.

When at last Kitty sat down to the meal which she no longer wanted,
every one else had left the table.  She was not sorry, for it saved her
from having to make a pretence of eating, and left her free to indulge
in her own moods.  It gave her time, too, to think over all that had
happened, and might yet happen.

Before she went up to bed, though, she got a tray, and collecting on it
a tempting meal, carried it to Dan's room.  She hoped he would let her
in, for she badly needed a talk with him, but just as she was about to
knock at his door the murmur of voices within arrested her attention.
Whom could Dan have got in there? she wondered in great surprise.
Tony was in bed, and Betty was in her room.  She listened more closely,
and nearly dropped the tray in her astonishment, for the voice she heard
was her father's, and she had never before known him go to their rooms
to talk to them.

For a moment her heart sank with dread.  Was he still angry?  Was he
scolding poor Dan again? he could hardly think so, for it was so unlike
him to be harsh or severe with any of them.

Then, as the voice reached her again, though she caught only the tone of
it, and not a word that was said, she knew that all was right, and with
a sudden lightening of her heart, and a sense of happiness, she quietly
crept away to her own room.  All the time she was undressing she
listened alertly for the sound of her father's footsteps, but she had
been in bed some time before they passed down the corridor.  "They must
be having a nice long talk," she thought, as she lay listening, in a
state of happy drowsiness; and she was almost in the land of Nod when a
sudden thought turned her happiness to dismay, and drove all sleep from
her.

"Oh!" she cried, springing up in her bed, "oh, how stupid of me!
How perfectly dreadfully stupid of me!"

"Whatever is the matter?" demanded Betty crossly.  "I was just beginning
a most beautiful dream, and now you have sent it right away."

"Never mind your dream," groaned Kitty.  "That's nothing compared with
that letter.  I did mean to get him to write it to-night, and I would
have posted it, so that it could reach almost as soon as the other,
and--and I _never_ did it, I never even asked him to write it, and now
the post has gone, and--"

"Whatever are you talking about?" interrupted Betty impatiently.

"Why, the letter to Aunt Pike, of course.  I was going to coax father to
write another letter to her to-night, to say it was all a mistake, that
we didn't want her, and--"

"Oh, that's all right," answered Betty coolly.  "Don't worry.  I have
written to Aunt Pike and told her all that, and I posted it myself to
make sure of its going.  She will get it almost as soon as she gets--"

"Betty, you haven't?"

"Yes, I have," said Betty quietly.  "Why not?  I am sure it was best to.
Fanny wouldn't live  with her, I know, and Jabez said it would be more
than his life was worth, and you know father hates changing servants, so
I wrote and told her exactly all about it.  I wrote quite plainly, and I
think she will understand."

"O Betty, you shouldn't have.  What _will_ father say?"

"Father will be very glad, I think.  He hates writing letters himself."

"Um--m!" commented Kitty dubiously, but said no more, for at that moment
Dan's door was opened, and she heard her father's steps pass lightly
along the corridor.

A few moments later she slipped out of bed and carried Dan's tray to his
room, but she did not go in with it.  Her instinct told her that he
would rather she did not just then; so, laying it on the floor, she
tapped lightly at his door, told him what was there, and crept back to
bed again.

"What a day it has been," she thought to herself as she nestled down
under the cool sheet.  "Yet it began like all the others.  I wonder how
all will end.  Perhaps it won't be so bad after all.  I hope that
Betty's letter won't do more harm than good.  I shouldn't be at all
surprised, though, if it made Aunt Pike make up her mind to come.  But
I'll try not to think about it," and turning over on her pillow, Kitty
had soon forgotten Aunt Pike, Anna, torn braid, orange cake, and Lady
Kitson, and was once again driving dear old Prue across the moor with
the storm beating and roaring about them, only this time it was a
dreamland moor and a dreamland storm.



CHAPTER V.


IN WENMERE WOODS.

"I could not think, for the moment," said Kitty, sitting up in bed and
clasping her knees, "why I woke with a feeling that something dreadful
had happened.  Of course it is Aunt Pike that is on my mind.

"She needn't be, then," said Betty, stretching herself luxuriously in
her little bed.  "My letter will settle all that worry."

"Um!" remarked Kitty thoughtfully, with none of the confidence shown
by her young sister.  "If your letter doesn't make her come by the very
first train, it will only be because she missed it.  I shouldn't be at
all surprised to see her walk in, and Anna too."

"You don't _really_ think she will?"  Betty, struck by something in
Kitty's voice, had stopped stretching herself, and looked across at her
sister.  "Kitty, you don't really mean that?  Oh no, of course you
don't; she couldn't really come to-day, she would have lots to do
first--packing and saying 'good-byes.'"

"I should think she hadn't a friend to say 'good-bye' to," said Kitty
naughtily.  "Any way, I am not going to worry about her.  If she doesn't
come--oh, it'll be perfectly lovely; and if she does--well, we will get
all the fun we can beforehand, and after, too, of course; but we will
try and have some jolly times first, won't we?  What shall we do to-day?
I wonder if Dan has planned anything."

What Dan's plan might be was really the important point, for according
to him the others, as a rule, shaped their day.

"I don't know if Dan has made any," cried Betty with sudden alertness,
"but I know what would be simply lovely.  Let's spend the day in Wenmere
Woods, and take our lunch with us, and then have tea at the farm--ham
and eggs, and cream, and cake, and--"

"Oh, I know," interrupted Kitty; "just what Mrs. Henderson always gives
us--"

"No," interrupted Betty anxiously, "not what she always gives us; we
will have fried ham and eggs as well, because, you see, it is a kind of
special day."

"Very well, we will if we have money enough.  I wonder if Dan will
agree."

"One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight," clanged out the town
clock viciously.  Betty sprang up in bed at once.  "It is time to get
up, Kitty," she said peremptorily.  "We've got to do everything right
to-day, and be very punctual at meals, and very tidy and all that sort
of thing, so that father will see that Aunt Pike isn't wanted.  Do you
think he will be vexed when he knows about my writing to her?
P'r'aps she won't tell."

Kitty scoffed at such an idea.  "Aunt Pike is sure to tell; but father
is never _very_ angry."

"But he might be," said Betty wisely; "he looked so last night when all
the mud dropped on his plate; but, of course, this is different--there
is nothing very bad about my writing the letter.  I did it to save
him trouble."

"Perhaps you had better tell father so," said Kitty dryly.
"Honour bright, though, Betty, I really would  tell him, and not let him
first find it out from Aunt Pike."

"Um!" ejaculated Betty thoughtfully, as she collected Kitty's sponge and
bath-towel before departing to the bathroom.  But there was nothing very
hearty in her tone.

When she returned, looking very fresh and rosy, and damp about the
curls, she found Kitty sitting on the side of her bed, and still in her
night-gown.  Hearing Betty's returning footsteps, she had managed to get
so far before the door was flung open, but that was all.

"Isn't it dreadful," she sighed wearily, "to think  that day after day,
year after year, all my life through, I shall have to get up in the
morning and go through all the same bother of dressing, and I--I hate it
so."

"P'r'aps you won't have to," said Betty cheerfully;  "p'r'aps you'll be
a bed-lier like Jane Trebilcock, and you won't have to have boots, or
dresses, or hats."

But the prospect did not cheer Kitty very greatly.  "I didn't say I
didn't want dresses and things.  I do.  I want lots of them, but I don't
want the bother of putting them on."

"Well, they wouldn't be much good if you didn't put them on," retorted
practical Betty.  "I hate getting up too"--Betty never failed in her
experience of any form of suffering or unpleasantness--"but I try to
make it a little different every day, to help me on.  Sometimes I
pretend the bath is the sea, and I am bathing; other times I only paddle
my feet, and sometimes I don't bath at all--that's when I am playing
that I am a gipsy or a tramp--"

"Betty, you nasty, horrid, dirty little thing!" cried Kitty, looking
shocked.

But Betty was quite unabashed.  "I've known you not wash either," she
remarked calmly.

Kitty coloured.  "But--but that was only once when I forgot; that is
quite different."

"But I don't see that it is," said Betty firmly.  You are not cleaner
because you forget to wash than if you don't wash on purpose.  Hark!
O Kitty!"

"What shall I do?" cried Kitty despairingly as the boom of the
breakfast-gong sounded through the house.  "I haven't begun to dress,
and--Fanny might have told me she was going to be punctual to-day."

"P'r'aps she didn't know it herself," said Betty, tugging away at her
tangle of curls with a comb, and scattering the teeth of it in a shower.
"I expect it is an accident."

"Then I wish she wouldn't have accidents," snapped Kitty.  "It is
awfully hard on other people."

Try as hard as one may, one cannot bath and dress in less than five
minutes.  Kitty declared she could have done it in that time, if Dan had
not had possession of the bathroom, and Betty had not used her
bath-towel and left it so wet that no one else could possibly use it.

"But I couldn't use my own," protested Betty, when the charge was
brought against her, "for I hadn't one, and of course I had to use
something."

When the discussion had proceeded for some time, Dr. Trenire looked up
from his paper with a half-resigned air.  "What is the matter, children?
Haven't we bath-towels enough to go round?  Kitty, you should tell me
when things are needed.  But never mind; your aunt will see to
everything of that sort now."

"I don't think she will," murmured Betty knowingly, but her father did
not hear her.  Kitty felt too dismayed to speak; there was something so
final in her father's tone, it made the coming of the dreaded aunt seem
quite inevitable.

"What are you children going to do to-day?" he went on kindly.  "It is a
glorious morning after the storm.  You ought to be out as much as
possible, all of you.  You should start as soon as you have finished
your work with Miss Pooley."

Miss Pooley was the governess who came daily from ten till one to
instruct them.  At least she instructed them as often as she had the
opportunity, but it very frequently happened that when she arrived she
was told that the children had gone out for the day, or even oftener a
little note to the same effect reached her, adding that as they would be
engaged all day they wished to save her the trouble of coming for
nothing.

This morning they had intended to do the same thing.  Kitty was to write
the note, and Tony to deliver it, but their father's remark, and his
look, touched their consciences.  Dan, too, for some reason or another,
was against it; he said he thought that after all it was a bit sneaky
and underhand, and he wasn't going to have any more of it.  Betty felt
the foundations of her world shake, and life bristled with new
difficulties; but Dan had said it, so no one questioned.  After Dan had
put things in that light, Kitty suddenly realized that their conduct in
the matter had been neither honourable nor honest.

"We will have our lessons and leave directly after," she planned
cheerfully.  "I will ask Fanny to let us have some food to take with us
for our dinner, and then we will go to the farm for tea, and come home
in time for supper.  Won't it be jolly!  And we will have our dinner
down by the river--by that dear little silvery, sandy beach, you know."

"It sounds fine," said their father, returning to the room just in time
to hear the arrangements.  "I wish I could go too."

"I wish you could," cried Kitty.  "Wouldn't it be fun to see father
exploring the woods, and catching beetles and minnows, and paddling in
the river, and--daddy, can't you come, just this once?"

"No, child, there is no paddling for me to-day, or playing wild man of
the woods or anything else.  I have a long round in the morning, and
another in the afternoon.  I have just been out interviewing Jabez."

"Oh," gasped Kitty, "I had forgotten Jabez.  Of course he can't drive
you, his head is all bandaged.  I will go, father; I'd love to drive
you."  And she meant it.  She would quite readily have given up her day
in Wenmere Woods to go with him.

Dr. Trenire laid his hand tenderly on her shoulder.  "It is all right,
dear; I shall have Jabez.  He has discarded his bandages, and is quite
presentable.  He says he took them off last night to have a look at the
wound, and when he saw what a little bit of a place it was, he made up
his mind he wasn't going about with his head tied up for people to poke
fun at him later on when they saw what he had been bandaged up for.
Go and enjoy yourself, child, and tell me all about it to-night; and do
try to keep out of mischief, all of you."

In the kitchen, when Kitty at last reached it, Fanny was making pasties;
and when Fanny chose she could make a pasty to perfection.  She made
them one each now with their initials on them, made of curly bits of
pastry, and promised to have them baked and ready by the time Miss
Pooley was gone.  Emily was in a good temper too.  The prospect of being
free from the children all day, and of having  no meals to get for them
till supper, quite cheered her.  She even, without being asked, cut them
some sandwiches, filled a bottle with milk, and produced a store of
apples, which she packed in their basket.  When the children, having
escaped from patient, easy-going Miss Pooley, rushed out to the kitchen
for their pasties and milk, and found things in this unusually happy
state, they marvelled at their good fortune, and accepted it thankfully.

"Fanny and Emily are quite nice sometimes," remarked Betty, as they left
the house, "only the worst of it is you never know when they are going
to be.  Sometimes they laugh at everything one says, and another time
they grumble."

"To-day they are like people are when you are ill and they are sorry for
you," said Tony, who had been puzzling himself for some minutes to know
how to express what he wanted to.  "I fink they are sorry for us 'cause
Aunt Pike is coming."

"'O wise young judge!'" said Dan, "I shouldn't be surprised if you were
right."  Dan had begun to read Shakespeare, and was full of quotations.
"It is rather like living in the shadow of the gallows.  I expect people
in the French Revolution felt as we do."

"I don't feel the least little bit like French Revolutions, or gallows,
or shadows, or even Aunt Pike and darling Anna, on such a glorious day
as this," cried Kitty joyfully.  "I can't think of them, and I am not
going to--yet.  Now, if you are all ready, let's race."

Their way led them down a steep hill almost opposite their own house--
a hill with just a house here and there on either side of it, and a
carpenter's shop, whence wafted out a sweet, fresh scent of newly-cut
wood.  The children raced to the very foot of it, and then retraced
their steps to gather up the fragments of the milk-bottle, which had
come to grief within the first twenty yards.  Then on they went again,
past more cottages and sundry turnings, until at last they reached a
curious old rough-and-tumble wharf on one side of the road, where the
coal which had been brought by train was piled up in great stacks for
the coalmen to take round presently in their carts.  Here, too, was
drawn up a train--one such as only those who lived in those parts have
ever been privileged to see.  It was composed of an old-fashioned squat
little engine called the "Rover," and a few open carriages, with seats
along the sides for passengers, and some trucks for any goods that might
be needed.

No passengers occupied the seats at that moment; in fact, they were
generally conspicuous by their absence, save once a year, when the whole
accommodation was bespoken for the Brianite Sunday-school treat.
The "Rover," in fact, spent most of her noble life in drawing coal,
clay, and sand up and down the seven miles which lay between Gorlay and
Wenbridge.  It seemed a limited sphere, but only to the ignorant, who
knew nothing of her services to the dwellers by the roadside, the
parcels she delivered, the boots she took to be mended and restored
again to their owners, the messages she carried, and the hundred and one
other little acts of usefulness which filled her daily round.  I say
"her," for to every one privileged to know her the "Rover" was a lady;
one who deserved and received all men's deference and consideration, and
the gentlest of handling too.

As Kitty and Dan lingered now by the gate to look at her, they saw
Dumble, the driver, lovingly passing a cloth over her, as though to wipe
the perspiration from her iron forehead, while Tonkin, the fireman,
stood leaning against her, with his arm caressingly outstretched.
Behind Dan and Kitty, on the farther side of the road, grew a high
hawthorn hedge, under the shelter of which was a seat where people sat
and sunned themselves by the hour, and at the same time gazed at the
life and bustle with which the wharf woke up now and then.  There were
two old men on the seat now.  They touched their hats to Dan and his
sister, and with a melancholy shake of their old heads sighed in
sympathy with Kitty as she cried, "O Dan, I wish we could all go by
train, all the way to Wenbridge.  It will be perfectly lovely down the
line."

But Dan seemed less eager than Kitty or the old men.  "We shall reach
the woods before they do, if we walk on," he said, moving away;
"and there is such a lot to see on the way."

Tony and Betty--who was carrying the basket because she felt she could
trust no one else with it--were nearly out of sight, so Dan and Kitty
hurried after them.  One side of the road was lined by fields, the other
by houses, and at the foot of their gardens ran the railway line until
it emerged through some allotment gardens on to the open road, after
which, for a while, train and foot passengers, and sometimes a drover,
with a herd of cattle, meandered along side by side in pleasant talk or
lively dispute--the latter usually, when Dan was on the road--until,
about a mile farther on, two more cottages, and the last, having been
passed, the road came to an abrupt end, and only the railway was left,
with a rough footpath along its edge, which pedestrians had worn for
themselves.

The quartette wandered on contentedly, stopping when they pleased, and
that was every few minutes.  Overhead the sky was a deep pure blue, and
the larks were singing rapturously; the sun shone brilliantly, drawing
out the smell of the tar from the "sleepers," and the scent from the
flowers.  Under the hawthorn hedges which bordered most of the way the
petals lay in a thick carpet.

On one side of the road, just before it terminated, was a well, buried
deep in a little green cave in the hedge, while the pure water from it
flowed generously over the floor of the cave, and ran in a never-failing
stream along one side of the way, past the gardens of the cottages, from
which at one time a root or maybe a seed only of the "monkey plant" had
been thrown, and taking root had flourished and flourished until the
stream now was hidden beneath a mass of lush green leaves and stems
crowned by tawny golden blossoms speckled and splashed with a deep rich
brown.

At the well a halt was always called, for the water of it had healing
properties, and from their babyhood the children had, as a matter of
duty, tested its powers by bathing their eyes; but to-day, as they
stooped over it, a weird shriek in the distance brought them to their
feet again.  Then came a great racket, as though a pile of all the loose
iron in the world were tumbling over, the ground vibrated, and the noise
drew closer and closer.

"The 'Rover';" cried Dan.  "She is coming!  Here's sport!  I'll duck
them."

Betty's was the only hat that would hold any quantity of water, and she
lent it gladly; but the brim was limp with age and hard wear, and a
broad-brimmed straw hat at its best is not an ideal vessel from which to
throw water over a flying foe.  The larger share of it Dan received in
his own shoes amidst the derisive laughter of his two intended victims
on the engine; and so completely mortified was he that Dumble, for a
wonder, refrained from his usual revenge, that of squirting hot water
from the engine over him.

Dan looked red and foolish, Betty was furious, Kitty wished they had let
the men alone, but at the same moment began to wonder how she could
avenge this humiliation they had put upon Dan.

After this little episode they walked on again, and for a while very
soberly, Tony busily engaged in picking up stones and spars in search of
some rare specimen that might please his father, Betty still clinging to
the basket, though her arm was aching with the weight of it.  By the
time they at last reached the woods they were all rather tired and
distinctly hungry, but they were never too tired or hungry to be roused
to enthusiasm by the sight that met them there.  No mere words can
depict the charm and beauty of Wenmere Woods.  No one can thoroughly
appreciate them who has not actually seen them.  No one who has seen
them can forget them.  To see them was to stand with a glad heart,
speechless, wide-eyed, wondering, and thanking God for such a sanctuary,
yet half incredulous that such a spot was real, was there always,
untouched, undefiled, waiting for one.  It might have been a fairy
place, that would fade and vanish as soon as one turned one's eyes away.

The woods were of no great extent, the trees were of no great size, but,
tall and graceful, they clothed the side of the hill without a break
down to the very edge of the river which ran through a valley which was
fairyland itself, and on the opposite side stretched away, almost from
the river's brink, up, and up, and up, until to all seeming they met the
sky.  Delicate, feathery larches and quivering birches they were for the
most part, and here and there, underneath their spreading branches, were
open spaces carpeted with wind-flowers and bluebells, primroses and wild
orchids, while ferns, large and small, grew in glorious profusion, some
as tall as Tony, others as fragile and tiny as a fairy fern might be.
In other spots large lichen-covered rocks raised their heads out of a
tangle of bracken and bushes, while here and there, down by the river's
brink, gleamed little bays of silver-white sand.

In Dr. Trenire's library were several large bound volumes of Tennyson's
"Idylls of the King," illustrated by Gustav Dore, and Kitty had never a
doubt in her mind that these were the woods the artist had depicted.
There could be no others like them.  Here Enid rode with Launcelot by
her side; on that silvery beach, where the old bleached tree trunk lay
as it must have lain for generations, Vivien had sat at Merlin's feet.
There, in that space carpeted by wind-flowers and primroses, Queen
Guinevere and Launcelot had said their last farewells.

To Kitty the whole beautiful spot was redolent of them.  They had been
there, ridden and walked, talked and laughed, loved, wept, and parted;
and in that beauty and mystery and silence it seemed to her that some
day, any day, they all would come again.  They were only sleeping
somewhere, waiting for some spell to be removed.  She was sure of it, as
sure as she was that King Arthur sat sleeping in his hidden cave,
spellbound until some one, brave and good and strong enough, should find
him and blow a huge blast on the horn which lay on the table before him,
and so waken him from his long magic sleep.  In her heart of hearts she
had a secret conviction that some day she would find the magic cave, and
Dan it would be who would possess the power to blow the magic horn.

She pictured herself dressed in flowing robes of white and gold, with
her hair in long plaits reaching to her knees, riding away beside the
king through those very woods, with the sunlight gleaming through the
trees and flashing on the water, and on her other hand would ride Dan in
shining armour, a second Sir Galahad.  She saw herself a woman, such a
beautiful, graceful woman, with earnest eyes and gentle face.  She saw a
knight, oh! such a splendid, courtly knight, and he looked at her and
looked again, and--

A little way up the hill she sat alone, her chin on her hand, gazing
down at the sun-flecked river, the shining sand, the fairy-like trees,
and saw it all as plainly as though it were then happening.  She saw the
graceful steeds, richly caparisoned, daintily picking their way through
underwood and rocks.  A stick cracked somewhere near.  Could they be
coming?  She hardly dared look about her lest she should be
disappointed.



CHAPTER VI.


TEA AT THE FARM.

"Kitty, _are_ you coming, or _are_ you not?  It is very mean of you to
keep us waiting all this time when you know how hungry we are!"

With a deep, regretful sigh and a little shake Kitty rose and made her
way to the large flat rock by the water's edge, on which the others had
grouped themselves in more or less easy attitudes, with the food as a
centrepiece.  Betty had spread a sheet of white paper, and on it had
arranged the pasties according to their length.

"You need not have waited for me," said Kitty, annoyed at having her
dreams so broken in upon.  "We have each got our own, and can eat them
when we like."

"But we never do begin until we all begin together," said Betty
reproachfully, "It would seem dreadfully mean; besides, we want you to
say which is my pasty and which Dan's.  The letter has been broken on
one, and knocked right off another.  I carried them ever and ever so
carefully, so it can't be my fault.  Don't you think this is meant for a
'D,' and that one"--holding out the largest--"without any letter at all,
is mine?"

Dan felt so sure of getting his rights that he lay quite undisturbed,
throwing bits of moss into the water, and left the others to settle the
dispute.

"No, I don't," said Kitty, without the slightest hesitation.
"Dan always has the largest, whether there is a letter on it or not, and
you always have the smallest but one."

Betty accepted the decision without dispute.  She had really not
expected any other, but she liked to assert herself now and then.

"I can't see," she said musingly, "why you should be expected to want
less to eat if you are only ten than if you are twelve.  It seems to me
so silly.  It isn't your age that makes you hungry."

As a rule the others left Betty to find the answer to her own arguments,
so she expected none from them.  She got none now.  They were all too
busy and too hungry to argue.  Tony alone was not eating.  He was
sitting with his pasty in one hand, while the other one was full of
anemones that he had gathered on his way, intending to take them home to
Fanny; but already the pretty delicate heads had begun to droop, and
Tony was gazing with troubled eyes at them.  He loved flowers so much he
could never refrain from gathering them, but the clasp of his hot little
hand was almost always fatal, and then he was grieved and remorseful.

Kitty, watching him, knew well what was in his mind.  He looked up
presently and caught her eye.

"I think I would put them in the river, if I were you, dear," she said.
"You see we shan't get home for hours yet, and they will be quite dead
long before that.  If you put them in the river they will revive."

"Won't it be drowning them?" asked Tony anxiously.

"No; they will float."

"I know what I will do," he said, cheered by an  idea that had come into
his head.  He laid down his pasty and trotted down to the edge of the
river.  In the wet sand he made little holes with his fingers, put the
stems in the holes, and covered them up as though they were growing;
then, greatly relieved, he returned and ate his pasty contentedly.

A pasty, even to a Cornish child, makes a satisfying meal, and when it
is flanked by sandwiches, and apples, and a good draught of river water,
there is no disinclination to remain still for a little while.  The four
sat on quietly, and talked in a lazy, happy way of the present, the
future, and the past--of what each one hoped to be, and of Dan's career
in particular; whether he would go away to school, and where.  Aunt Pike
came under discussion too, but not with that spirit of bitterness which
would have been displayed at home, or before a less satisfying repast.
Here, in the midst of this beauty and peace, everything seemed
different.  Wrongs and worries appeared so much smaller and less
important--any grievance was bearable while there was this to come to.

They talked so long that a change came over the aspect of the woods.
The sun lost its first clear, penetrating brilliancy, and took on a
deeper glow.  Dan noticed it first, and sprang to his feet.

"Let's move on," he cried, "or it will be tea-time before we have done
anything."

"If we are going to have ham and eggs for tea," said matter-of-fact
Betty, "I think one of us had better order them soon, or Mrs.  Henderson
may say she can't cook them in time."

The appeal did not touch them so keenly as it would have done had their
last meal been a more distant memory.  But, at the same time, the ham
and eggs and cream tea was to be a part of their day, and they were not
going to be deprived of it.  So they clambered up through the woods
again till they reached the railway line, and strolled along it until
they came to the farm.

Kitty, being the eldest, was chosen to go in and order the tea, while
the others hung over the gate and sniffed in the mingled perfume of the
roses, the pinks, and all the other sweet-scented flowers with which the
little garden was stocked.  Across the garden, in the hedge, was another
gate through which they could see a steep sunny field stretching away
down to the river bank, which was steeper here and higher, with old
gnarled trees growing out of it, their large roots so exposed that one
wondered how they managed to draw sustenance enough from the ground to
support the great trunks and spreading  branches.

"I have ordered ham and eggs, and cream, and jam, and cake," said
Kitty, as she rejoined them, "and it will all be ready in an hour.
It is three o'clock now."

"Only three!" sighed Dan in mock despair.  "One whole hour to wait!
Will it take all that time to  get it ready?"

"I think it is a good thing," said Betty, "that we have to wait, for we
are not _very_ hungry now--at least I am not; and you see we've got to
pay the same however little we eat, and it does seem a pity to waste our
money."

"What a mind she has!" cried Dan, pretending to be lost in admiration.
But at that same moment there once more reached their ears sounds as of
an approaching earthquake.

"The train!" cried Betty, and seizing Tony's hand, drew him carefully
back close to the gate.

Dan cast a hasty look around him for handy missiles.  Kitty saw it, and
knew what was in his mind.

"Don't throw things at them, Dan, please!  Think of yesterday, and
Jabez, and Aunt Pike.  _Don't_ throw anything to hurt them."

The "Rover" was lumbering nearer and nearer.  The two men on it had
already caught sight of the quartette at the gate, and were grinning at
them derisively.  It really was almost more than any human boy could be
expected to endure.

"Ha, ha!" jeered the men, as they lumbered by, "be yer boots dry yet,
sir?  Wonderful cooling to the brain a wet 'at is--cooling to the feet,
too, sometimes!"

Dan's blood rose.  He felt he simply had to throw something, or do
something desperate.  Betty's basket, still well supplied, was hanging
on her arm close beside him.  With one grab he seized the contents, and
first an apple went flying through the air, then a paper packet.
Tonkin, the fireman, caught the apple deftly; the packet hit Dumble on
the chest, and dropped to the floor.  Dumble himself was too fat to
stoop, so Tonkin pounced on it.  The engine was at a little distance
now, and aim was easier.  Another apple, well directed, hit Tonkin fair
and square on the top of his head, while a third caught Dumble with no
mean force full on his very broad nose, making him dance and shout with
pain.

As the engine disappeared round the bend, with the two men grasping
their spoils and their bruises, Dan felt himself avenged, and the one
cloud on his day was lifted.

Kitty drew a deep sigh of relief that the episode was ended; Betty, one
of regret.

"There were six large sandwiches in that packet,"  she said
reproachfully, "and the apples were beauties.  I wish now I had eaten
more.  I am sure I could have if I had tried."

Though there was plenty to do in the woods, that hour to tea-time seemed
somehow a very long one, and quite ten minutes before it was up they
were back at the farm to inquire if it was four o'clock yet.
Mrs. Henderson smiled knowingly as she saw them gathered at the door,
but she noticed that the eager faces were flushed and weary-looking, and
she asked them in to sit down and rest, promising she would not keep
them long.

As they were to have "a savour to their tea" they were to have the meal
in the house, instead of in the garden, and glad enough they were to
sink into the slippery, springless easy-chairs, which seemed to them
then the most luxurious seats the world could produce--at least they did
to Kitty and Dan, who took the only two; Betty got on the window-seat
and stretched herself out; Tony, a very weary little man indeed,
scrambled on to Kitty's lap; and all of them, too tired to talk much,
gazed with interest about the long, low room.

It was not beautiful, and they knew it well, yet the fascination of it
never failed.  On the walls were hung large framed historical and
scriptural scenes, worked in cross-stitch with wool's of the brightest
hues, varied by a coloured print of a bird's-eye view of the battle of
Tel-el-Kebir, an almanac for the current year, and a large oleograph of
a young lady und a dog wreathed in roses that put every flower in the
garden to shame for size and brilliancy.  But none of these could give a
tithe of the pleasure the worked ones did; there was such fascination in
counting how many stitches went to the forming of a nose, how many red
and how many white to the colouring of a cheek, or the shaping of the
hands, and fingers, and toes.

"I didn't know that Robert Bruce had six toes!" said Betty, very solemn
with the importance of her discovery, her eyes fastened on a
representation of that hero asleep in a cave, while a spider as large as
his head wove a web of cables across the opening.  "Did you, Dan?"

"Didn't you?" answered Dan gravely.  "Don't you know that in Scotland
they have an extra toe in case one should get frost-bitten and drop
off?"

"Of course I know it is very cold up there," said Betty, who was never
willing to admit ignorance of anything; "but supposing two got
frost-bitten and dropped off, what would they do then?"

Dan, pretending not to hear her question, strolled over to the bookcase.

"Surely it must be tea-time!" he exclaimed.

Betty, seeing that no answer was forthcoming, slipped from her seat to
examine more closely some wax fruit which, under a glass case, adorned a
side-table.

"I do think it is wonderful how they make them," she said impressively;
"they are so exactly like real fruit."

Mrs. Henderson, coming into the room at that moment, heard the remark,
and her heart was won.  She had more than once had a suspicion that some
of her visitors laughed at her treasured ornaments, and made jokes about
them, and the thought had hurt her, for her affections clung to them,
and particularly to the was fruit, which had been one of her most prized
wedding gifts, so Betty's remark went straight to her heart.  She beamed
on Betty, and Betty beamed back on her.

"You have such a lot of beautiful things, Mrs. Henderson," she said in
her politest manner.  "I can't help admiring them."

"It's very kind of you, I'm sure, miss.  Of course we all get attached
to what's our own, specially when 'tis gived to us; and I'm very proud
of my fruit, same as I am of my worked pictures."

"I think they are wonderful," breathed Betty, turning from the wax fruit
to gaze at Eli and Samuel.  "Did you"--in a voice full of awe--
"really work them yourself, Mrs. Henderson?"

"I did, missie, every stitch of them," said their owner proudly;
"and all while I was walking out with Henderson."

"While you were walking!" gasped Betty.  "But how could you see where
you were going?"

Mrs. Henderson laughed.  "No, missie; I mean the years we was courting."

"How interesting," said Betty solemnly.  "I think I shall work some for
my house when I am married.  Do you work them on canvas?  Can I get it
in Gorlay?"

"Yes, miss; but you needn't hurry to begin to-night," said Mrs.
Henderson, laughing.  "If you want any help, though, when you do begin,
or would like to copy mine, I'll be very glad to do what I can for you."

"Oh, thank you very much.  I should like to do some exactly like yours,"
cried Betty excitedly.  "Then, when I'm far away, they'll always remind
me of you and the farm, and--and I'd like to begin with Robert Bruce and
his six toes, and--"

"You would never have patience to do work like that," interrupted Dan
cruelly, "nor the money either; and I don't suppose you will ever go out
of Gorlay."

"You wait," said Betty, very much annoyed by his humiliating
outspokenness.  "You wait"--with a toss of her head--"until I am grown
up, then I shall marry some one, and I shall travel, and--"

"All right," said Dan, "I will wait; and I hope I never have a headache
till it happens."



CHAPTER VII.


THE "ROVER" TAKES THEM HOME.

Tony was nearly asleep on Kitty's shoulder, and Kitty herself was
distinctly drowsy, but the arrival of the teapot and the ham and eggs
roused them effectually.  Kitty took her place before the tea-tray, Dan
before the hot dish, Betty got as near the cream as she could, and Tony
drew a chair close to Kitty, and very soon their spirits began to rise
to their highest, and their tiredness vanished.  The tea was refreshing,
the ham and home-made bread and everything on the table were perfectly
delicious, and they ate, and ate, and talked and laughed until Kitty
wondered how it was that Mrs. Henderson did not come in and ask them to
be quiet.  They had all, at the same moment, reached that mood when
everything one says, or thinks, or does, sounds or seems amusing; and
they laughed and laughed without being able to check themselves, until
at last Kitty found herself with her head in the tea-tray, while Dan
hung limply over the back of his chair, and Betty and Tony laid their
heads on the table and held their aching sides.

"Oh dear!" cried Kitty, straightening herself and trying to compose her
face.  "They say it is unlucky to laugh so much.  I wonder if it is
true.  It does seem hard, doesn't it?"

The thought sobered them a little, and they gave themselves up to their
tea.

"I never know," said Betty thoughtfully, after a somewhat long silence,
"whether it is better to begin with ham and end with cream and jam, or
to begin with cream and then have the ham, but it seems to me that it is
just the same whichever I do--I _can't_ eat much of both.  I have tried
and tried."

"I call that a real affliction," said Dan soberly.  "Of course there is
just a chance that you may grow out of it in time, but it is hard
lines."

"Yes," sighed Betty, "it really is," and lapsed into quietness.
"Another time," she said at last, very gravely, "I think I shall come
twice, and not have both at the same tea."

"Perhaps you would like Mrs. Henderson to save you some till to-morrow,"
suggested Dan ironically.

"No--o," said Betty seriously, "I don't think I will.  I don't expect I
shall want any more as soon as to-morrow, but--"

"You aren't feeling ill, are you?" asked Kitty anxiously, as she studied
Betty's face.

"No--o," answered Betty slowly, "not ill; but it's funny that what is so
nice to think about before tea isn't half as nice after."

"If I were you," said Dan pointedly, "I would go and sit in the meadow
for a bit, and keep very still until it is time to go home."

"I think I will," said Betty gravely, and started; but they had all
finished their meal by this time, and following Dan's advice, strolled
out once more to the scented garden, and down through the sloping meadow
to the riverside.  It was nearly time to wind their way homewards, but
they must have a little rest first, and one more look at the river and
the woods, so they perched themselves about on the old tree roots, which
formed most comfortable and convenient seats--all but Dan, who seemed to
prefer to perch on a rock which stood in the middle of the river, which
was shallower here and wider.  To get to it he had to take off his shoes
and stockings and wade, which perhaps made up for the uncomfortableness
of the seat when he reached it, and soon sent him wading back through
the cool rippling water again.

The handkerchiefs of the family having been commandeered in place of a
towel, and Dan's feet clad once more, they all sat on in a state of
lazy, happy content, playing "Ducks and Drakes," or talking, until at
last Kitty, looking at the sky, saw with a shock that the sun was
already setting, and realizing that they still had the long walk home
before them, roused the party to sudden activity.

They were all on their feet in a moment.  "I think we had better get out
on the road by this gate, instead of going back to the house again," she
said, hurrying towards one at the end of the field which brought them at
once out on to the road.

"But hadn't you better pay Mrs. Henderson?" questioned Betty, as she
panted after her hurrying sister.

"Oh!" Kitty stood still and gasped, "I had quite  forgotten!  How stupid
of me!  I am glad you remembered, Betty," and they all streamed back to
the farm again and into the little garden, more heavily scented than
ever now as the flowers revived in the dew and cooler air.

Mrs. Henderson came out to them quite smilingly, and apparently not at
all concerned about their debt to her.  In her hand she was holding a
flower-pot with a sturdy-looking little rose bush flowering in it.
The children eyed it admiringly.  It had two delicate pink roses in full
bloom on it, and several little buds.  "I was wondering, missie," she
said, turning to Betty, and holding out the rose to her, "if you would
be pleased to have this little plant; 'tis off my old monthly rose that
I've had for so many years.  I planted this one last year and it has
come on nicely.  Would you be pleased to accept it?"

Betty gasped.  For a moment she was so surprised and overjoyed as to be
speechless.  "Me! For me!" she cried at last.  "Oh, how lovely!
Thank you _so_ much, Mrs. Henderson.  I'll keep it always, and 'tend to
it myself every day.  I have never had a plant of my own before, and I
shall love it," and Betty took her rose in her arms and hugged it in
pure joy.

"You have made Betty very happy now, Mrs. Henderson," said Kitty,
without a trace of envy in her heart.  "Thank you for all you have done
for us.  Good-night."

"Good-night, and thank you for our fine tea," said Dan, and one by one
they passed out of the scented garden, and on their homeward way.

A soft evening mist was creeping slowly up over the river and the
sloping meadow; the distant woods looked desolate, and almost awesome.
Kitty could nut picture them now peopled as they had been in the
morning, and her efforts to do so were soon interrupted by a little
piteous voice beside her.

"My feets do hurt me," said Tony plaintively.  "I s'pose I mustn't take
off my boots?"

"Poor old Tony," cried Dan.  "Here, let me carry you," and he hoisted
his tired little brother on to his shoulders.  But Dan was tired too,
and the way was long, and they had either to walk in single file along
the tiny track worn beside the sleepers, or over the sleepers
themselves, and that meant progressing by a series of hops and jumps,
which might perhaps be amusing for a few minutes at the beginning of a
day's pleasuring, but is very far from amusing when one is tired and the
way is long.  The summer evening was warm too.

"I wish the old 'Rover' would come along," panted Dan at the end of
about a quarter of an hour's march.  "I'd get those fellows to give us a
lift for part of the way at any rate."

"Oh," sighed Betty, "how lovely that would be!  But things don't happen
when you want them to, do they?"

Miss Betty's sad and cynical view of life was wrong though, for not so
very much later the familiar rumbling and shaking, and puffing and
rattling, reached their ears once more, and coming, too, from the
direction of Wenbridge.

In a state of anxious excitement they all stood to await it.  "Hadn't we
better hold up a pocket-handkerchief for a white flag to show them we
are friendly?" asked Betty anxiously.

"They wouldn't understand if we did," said Dan impatiently.
"They'd only think we were trying to frighten them.  Kitty, if you go
back towards them, holding up your hand, they will know it's all right.
They will trust you.  It's only me they are down on, really."

Kitty went back at once, and fortunately, just as she was trying to
attract their attention and make them understand that she had only
friendly intentions, they brought the engine to a standstill for Tonkin
to get down and collect some faggots which lay beside the way.
The engine snorted, and spit, and panted, and Dumble watched Kitty's
approach with an eye which was not encouraging; but Kitty, though her
heart was quaking a little, advanced bravely.

"Dumble," she called to him, in a friendly, conciliating voice,
stretching up to him confidingly--"Dumble, we are _so_ tired.  My little
brother Tony can hardly get on at all, his feet are hurting him so
badly, and he is too heavy for Dan to carry all the way; and Dan is
tired too, and--and we wondered if--if you would give us a lift, even
if it is only for a little way.  Will you?"

Dumble, his face rather flushed, straightened himself.  "Look at my
nose, miss," he said meaningly.  "Look at my nose," pointing to that
poor feature, which certainly looked red and swollen.  "That's your
brother's doings, heaving apples and not caring what he strikes with
'em, and yet after that you can come and ask me to take 'ee all aboard
of my train."

"I am very sorry, Dumble, that you got hit, I am really, but--well, you
did get the apples and some nice sandwiches too, you know; and when you
aim at Dan it is never with anything nicer than hot water, and you know
you did really scald him once but he never told how it was done."

Dumble looked rather foolish.  "Didn't 'ee now?" he said, but his tone
was less indignant.  "Yes, we had the apples, and fine ones they were
too.  Well, come along.  Tell 'em all to look sharp and hop up, for 'tis
'bout time we was to 'ome, and the 'Rover' put up for the night."

Gladly enough the others obeyed her eager signals.  Joyfully they
scrambled up into the high carriage and dropped on the dusty, gritty
seats.  Dan and his enemies exchanged broad, sheepish smiles, but they
were amiable smiles.  Tonkin flung up the last of the faggots and
climbed up on the engine, and off they started.  And _what_ a journey it
was!  All about them stretched the country, vast and still and empty,
they themselves, seemingly, the only living creatures in it, the panting
and rumbling of the engine the only sound to be heard, for it drowned
all such gentle sounds as the "good-nights" of the birds, the distant
lowing of cows, the rippling of the brook beside the way.

Daylight was fading fast.  Here and there the way was narrow, and the
hedges so high that the hawthorns almost met overhead; and here and
there, where tall fir trees lined the road on either side, it was very
nearly dark.

By two of them, at least, that journey in the fading light was never
forgotten.  It had been such a happy day, so free from worries and
naughtiness or squabbles, or any cause for regret; and now they were
going home, happy but tired, and longing to be in the dear old untidy,
shabby home again.  Kitty, with Tony nestling against her, leaned back
in her corner restfully, and thought of her home with a depth of feeling
she could not have defined.  "If it could only be like this always," she
said to herself, "and there is no reason why it shouldn't if only we
were good and every one was nice.  I wonder, I wonder if I cannot make
it so that father wouldn't want any one to live with us."

On they rattled and jolted, past the two cottages, with their windows
lighted up now and the blinds drawn; past the little well, its cave
looking dark and mysterious under its green canopy.  Kitty, lost to the
others and their talk, gazed with loving eyes at everything.
"Dear little well," she thought.  "Dear old 'Rover,' and Gorlay, and
home, how I do love every inch and stick and stone of it!  I think I
should die if I had to leave--"

"Kitty, _have you got_ a shilling?" Dan shrieked in her ear with such
vigour that Kitty really leaped in her seat.

"What _is_ the matter?" she demanded crossly.  It was not pleasant to be
roused from her musings and brought back thus to everyday, prosaic
matters; and it happened to her so often, or so it seemed.

"I have asked you three times already.  Have you got a shilling?
We shall have to get down presently, or we shall be seen, and the men
and all of us will get into a row because we are travelling without
tickets.  We had better get down when they come to the 'lotment gardens,
and we must tip them; but Betty has only got tuppence, and I have only
fourpence, and that is all in coppers, mostly ha'pennies.  I don't like
to offer it to them."

"I haven't a shilling," said Kitty regretfully.  "I have only eightpence
left; the tea cost a good deal," and she produced from her purse a
sixpenny bit and two pennies.

Dan looked at their combined wealth disgustedly.  "They'll think we've
been saving up for this little go," he said in a mortified voice;
"but I'll give them the lot, and tell them it is all we have left."

"I don't suppose they will mind ha'pennies," said Kitty consolingly.

"Of course they won't," said Betty, who was rather cross at having to
lay down her beloved rose and dive for her purse; "they aren't so silly.
Besides, they have had our apples and sandwiches already."

"Well, don't remind them of that again," said Kitty anxiously, for it
was just the kind of thing Betty would do; but before she could extract
a promise the engine slowed down and they hastily prepared to dismount.

Dan coloured as he put the sixpenny bit and the coppers into Dumble's
grimy hand.  "I am sorry there's such a lot of pence," he said shyly;
"but it is all we've got left, and--and--"

"Aw," said Dumble, who had expected nothing, and was rather embarrassed
than otherwise by their generosity, "thank 'ee kindly, sirs, and young
leddies; there wasn't no 'casion to give us nothing; but thank 'ee very
much all the same, and 'nother time we'll be glad to 'blige 'ee with
'nother lift."

"Thank you very much," said Dan.  "But it isn't as much as it looks; it
is only fourteen pence altogether.  I--I thought I'd tell you for fear
you'd be disappointed;" and thankful for the darkness which hid his
embarrassment, he joined the others, and with many friendly
"Good-nights" to the "Rover" they started on the last stage of their
journey.

Briskly enough they started; but their pace soon changed; their feet
were weary, and there was really no great need to hurry now.
There would be no scoldings or punishments when they got home, even if
they were late, for no one there was very particular as to time, and
there was so much to see that they did not usually see that they stopped
repeatedly to look about them. The cottages were all lighted up now,
and in some of them the blinds had been left undrawn and the windows
open. Even the old wharf, too, had here and there a light gleaming out
of its blackness, adding to the weird mystery of the place, and then in
rattled the "Rover," and drew up panting and throwing out deep breaths
of steam and smoke and sparks, as though she had come at breakneck speed
on urgent business from the extreme limits of the earth, and could
scarcely be restrained from starting off again.  In the dim light they
could see Dumble and Tonkin wandering round and lovingly criticizing
their fiery steed.  "'Er 'ave gone well to-day," they heard Dumble
saying proudly.  "'Er 'ave gone like a little 'are."

"Ay, ay, proper!" responded Tonkin with solemn emphasis.  "Since 'er was
cleaned I'd back 'er agin all the new-fangled engines in the world.
Give the 'Rover' a fair bit of line to travel over, and 'er'll--well,
'er'll do it."

The children chuckled to themselves and moved on.  "To-night, with the
'Rover' drawn up in it, it doesn't look quite so much like Quilp's Wharf
as usual," said Kitty, looking back lingeringly at the black, ramshackle
collection of old tarred sheds; "but I am sure I shall see Quilp's boy
standing on his head there one day."



CHAPTER VIII.


A BAD BEGINNING.

On again they went, past more cottages with groups of people gossiping
at their doors, or sitting about on low steps or the edges of the
pavement, enjoying the cool and calm of the summer evening; up the steep
hill where the milk-bottle had come to grief in the morning, past the
carpenter's shop, fast closed now, all but the scent of the wood, which
nothing could keep in.

It was a stiff pull to the top for tired people, but it was reached at
last.  With a deep sigh of satisfaction they crossed the quiet street in
leisurely fashion to their own front door, where, summoning what energy
they had left, they gave a friendly "whoop!" to let their arrival be
known, and burst into the house pell-mell; then stopped abruptly, almost
tumbling over each other with the shock, and stared before them in
silent, speechless amazement at a pile of luggage which filled the
centre of the hall.  Betty stepped back and looked at the plate on the
door to make quite sure that they had not burst into the wrong house;
but Kitty, with a swift presentiment, realized to whom that luggage
belonged and what it meant, and her heart sank down, down to a depth she
had never known it sink before.

Before she could speak, though, Emily appeared from somewhere, her face
a picture of rage, offended dignity, and fierce determination; but as
soon as she caught sight of the bewildered, wondering quartette, her
whole expression changed.  She came to them, as Kitty said afterwards,
as though there had been a death in the family and she had to break the
news to them.  But it was an arrival she had to announce, not a
departure, and she announced it abruptly.

"She's come!" she gasped in a whisper more penetrating than a shout; and
her face added, "You poor, poor things, I am sorry for you."

For once Emily's sympathies were with them, and even while staggering
under the blow they had just received, Kitty could not help noticing the
fact.

"What?--not Aunt Pike?--to stay?" gasped Dan.

Emily nodded, a world of meaning in the action.  "You'd best go up and
speak to her at once, or she'll be crosser than she is now, if that's
possible.  She's as vexed as can be 'cause there wasn't nobody to the
station to meet her, nor nobody here when she come."

"But we didn't know.  How could we?  And who could have even dreamed of
her coming to-day!" they argued hotly and all at once.

"A tellygram come soon after you'd a-gone," said Emily, with a sniff;
"but there wasn't nobody here to open it.  And how was we to know what
was inside of it; we can't see through envelopes, though to hear some
people talk you would think we ought to be able to."

Kitty knew it was her duty to check Emily's rude way of speaking of her
aunt, but a common trouble was uniting them, and she felt she could not
be severe then.

"Doesn't father know yet?" she asked.

"No, miss."

"Poor father!  Has Aunt Pike really come to _stay_, Emily?"

"I can't make out for certain, miss; but if she isn't going to stay now,
she is coming later on.  I gathered that much from the way she talked.
She said it didn't need a very clever person to see that 'twas high time
somebody was here to look after things, instead of me being with my 'ead
out of win--I mean, you all out racing the country to all hours of the
night, and nothing in the house fit to eat--"

Kitty groaned.

"I've got to go and get the spare-room ready as soon as she comes out of
it," went on Emily.  "A pretty time for anybody to have to set to to
sweep and dust."

Kitty, though, could not show any great sympathy there; having to sweep
and dust seemed to her at that moment such trifling troubles.  "Where is
she now, Emily?"

"In the spare-room."

"Oh, the dust under the bed!" groaned Kitty.  "She is sure to see it; it
blows out to meet you every time you move!"

"Never mind that now," said Dan; "it is pretty dark everywhere.  But we
had better do a bunk and clean ourselves up a bit before she sees us,"
and he set the example by kicking off his shoes and disappearing like a
streak up the stairs.

In another moment the hall was empty, save for eight very dirty shoes
and the pile of severe-looking luggage.

To convince Aunt Pike that her presence and care were absolutely
unnecessary was the one great aim and object which now filled them all,
and as a means to this end their first idea was to dress, act, and talk
as correctly and unblamably as boys and girls could.  So, by the time
the worthy lady was heard descending, they were all in the drawing-room,
seated primly on the stiffest chairs they could find, and apparently
absorbed in the books they gazed at with serious faces and furrowed
brows.  To the trained eye the "high-water marks" around faces and
wrists were rather more apparent and speaking than their interest in
their books.  Their heads, too, were strikingly wet and smooth around
their brows, but conspicuously tangled and unkempt-looking at the back.

However, on the whole they appeared well-behaved and orderly, and the
expression of welcome their faces assumed as soon as their aunt was
heard approaching was striking, if a little overdone.  It was
unfortunate, though, that they and Emily had forgotten to remove their
dirty shoes from the hall, or to light the gas, for Aunt Pike, groping
her way downstairs in the dark, stumbled over the lot of them--stumbled,
staggered, and fell!  And of all unyielding things in the world to fall
against, the corner of a tin box is perhaps the worst.

The expression of welcome died out of the four faces, their cheeks grew
white; Kitty flew to the rescue.

"I'm jolly glad it isn't my luggage," murmured Dan, preparing to follow.

"She shouldn't have left it there," said Betty primly.

"I expect it's our shoes she's felled over," whispered Tony in a scared
voice.  "I jumped over them when I came down, but I don't 'spect Aunt
Pike could."

Dan and Betty looked at each other with guilty, desperate eyes.

"Well, you left yours first," said Betty, anxious to shift all blame,
"and you ran upstairs first, and--and we did as you did, of course."

"Oh, of course," snapped Dan crossly, "you always do as I do, don't you?
Now go out and tell Aunt Pike that, and suck up to her.  If she's going
to live here, it's best to be first favourite." At which unusual
outburst on the part of her big brother Betty was so overcome that she
collapsed on to her chair again, and had to clench her hands tightly and
wink hard to disperse the mist which clouded her eyes and threatened to
turn to rain.

But a moment later the entrance of Aunt Pike helped her to recover
herself--Aunt Pike, with a white face and an expression on it which said
plainly that her mind was made up and nothing would unmake it.
Betty and Tony stepped forward to meet her.

"How do you do, Elizabeth?--How do you do, Anthony?  I should have gone
to your bedrooms to see you, thinking naturally that you two, at least,
would be in bed, but I was told you were still racing the country.
Anna goes to bed at seven-thirty, and she is a year older than you,"
looking at Betty very severely.

"Is Anna here too?" asked Kitty, saying anything that came into her head
by way of making a diversion.

"No, she is not.  She will join me later.  We were just about to move to
another hydropathic establishment when your poor father's letter reached
me, and I felt that, no matter at what sacrifice on my part, it was my
duty to throw up all my own plans and come here at once."

"Then the postman must have missed my letter," said Betty indignantly.
"What a pity! for it would have told you we didn't want--I mean, it
would have saved you the trouble--"

"It was your letter, Elizabeth, which decided me to come," said Mrs.
Pike, turning her attention to poor Betty.  "It reached me by the same
post as your poor father's, and when I read it I felt that I must come
at once--that my place was indeed here.  So I confided Anna to the care
of friends, and came, though at the greatest possible inconvenience, by
the next train.  And what," looking round severely at them all, "did I
find on my arrival?  No one in the house to greet me!  My nephews and
nieces out roaming the country alone, no one knew where!  One maid out
without leave, and the other--well, you might almost say she was out
too, for her head protruded so far from her bedroom window that I could
see it almost from the bottom of the street."

"Emily _will_ hang out of window," sighed Kitty.

"And when I reprimanded her she was most impertinent.  Is she always so
when she is reprimanded, Katherine?"

"We--we don't reprimand her," admitted Kitty.  "I am afraid she would be
if we did," she added honestly.

At that moment Dan burst into the room carrying a bottle.  "If you put
some of this on the bruises," he said, offering it to his aunt, "it'll
take the pain out like anything.  Jabez has it for the horses, and I've
used it too; it is capital stuff."

Mrs. Pike looked at the bottle with an eye which for a moment made Kitty
quake, for Dan had brought it in with the fine crust of dirt and grease
on it that it had accumulated during a long sojourn in the coach-house.
But something, perhaps it was Dan's thoughtfulness, checked the severe
remark which had almost burst from her lips.

"Thank you, Daniel," she said, almost graciously.  "If you will ask one
of the servants to clean the outside of the bottle, I shall be very glad
of the contents, for I feel sure I have bruised myself severely."

Betty was about to offer her pocket-handkerchief for the purpose when
she remembered that she had not one with her, and so saved herself from
further humiliation.

"At what hour do you dine--or sup?" asked Mrs. Pike, turning to Kitty.

"We have supper at--at--oh, when father is home, or we--or we come home,
or--when it is convenient."

"Or when the servants choose to get it for you, perhaps," said Aunt Pike
sarcastically, but hitting the truth with such nicety that Kitty
coloured.  "Well," she went on, "if you can induce the maids to give us
a meal soon I shall be thankful, for I have had nothing since my lunch;
and I really feel, with all the agitation and shocks and blows I have
had this day, as though I were nearly fainting."

Poor Kitty, with a sinking heart, ran off at once, glad to escape, but
overwhelmed with dread of what lay before her.  To her relief she found
that Fanny had returned; but Fanny was hot with the first outburst of
indignation at the news that awaited her, and was angry and mutinous,
and determined to do nothing to make life more bearable for any of them.

In response to Kitty's meek efforts to induce her to do her best to make
the supper-table presentable, and not a shame to them all, she refused
point-blank to stir a finger.

"There's meat pasties, and there's a gooseberry tart, and cheese, and
cold plum-pudding, and cake, and butter and jam," she said, enumerating
thing after thing, designed, so it seemed to Kitty, expressly for the
purpose of giving Aunt Pike a nightmare; "and I've got some fish for the
master, that I am going to cook when he comes, and not before."

"O Fanny, do cook it for Aunt Pike, please.  It is just the thing for
her, and I am sure father would rather she should have it than that she
should complain that she had nothing to eat--"

"Well, Miss Kitty," burst in Fanny indignantly, "I don't know what _you_
calls nothing.  I calls it a-plenty and running over; and if what's good
enough for us all isn't good enough for Mrs. Pike, well--"

"It is _good_ enough, Fanny," urged Kitty; "only, you see, we like it
and can eat it, but Aunt Pike can't.  You know the last time she was
here she said everything gave her indigestion--"

"Them folks that is so afflicted," said Fanny, "should stay in their own
'omes, or the 'ospital.  I'm sure master don't want patients indoors so
well as out, and be giving up the food out of his own mouth to them.
The bit of fish I've got for master I'm going to keep for master.
If anybody's got to have the indigestion it won't be him, not if I knows
it; he's had nothing to eat to-day yet to speak of, and if nobody else
don't consider him, well, I _must_," and with this parting thrust Fanny
left the kitchen to go to her bedroom.

Kitty longed to be able to depart to her room too, to lock herself in
and fasten out all the worries and bothers, and all thoughts of supper
and Aunt Pike, and everything else that was worrying.  "I wish I had
stayed in the woods," she thought crossly; "there would be peace there
at any rate," and her mind wandered away to the river and the little
silvery bays, and the tree-covered slopes rising up and up, and she
tried to picture it as it must be looking then at that moment, so still,
and lonely, and mysterious.

"I'll see that it all looks nice, Miss Kitty," said Emily with unusual
graciousness.  She felt really sorry for Kitty and the position she was
in, and having quite made up her mind to leave now that this new and
very different mistress had come, she was not only beginning already to
feel a little sad at the thought of parting from them all, but a lively
desire to side with them against the common enemy.  She failed quite to
realize that her past behaviour had reconciled Kitty more than anything
to the "enemy's" presence, and made her coming almost a relief.
"I'll get Fanny to poach some eggs, or make an omelette or something.
Don't you worry about it."

Kitty, immensely relieved and only too glad to follow Emily's last bit
of advice, wandered out and through the yard towards the garden.
She felt she could not go back to the company of Aunt Pike again, for a
few moments at any rate.

Prue was standing with her head out of her window, anxiously wondering
where Jabez was with her supper.  Kitty spoke to her and passed on.
She strolled slowly up the steps, past the fateful garden wall and the
terrace above to the next terrace, where stood a pretty creeper-covered
summer-house.  It was a warm night, and very still and airless.
Kitty sat down on the step in the doorway of the summer-house, and
staring before her into the dimness, tried to grasp all that had
happened, and what it would mean to them.  She thought of their lazy
mornings, when they lay in bed till the spirit moved them to get up; of
the other mornings when they chose to rise early and go for a long walk
to Lantig, or down to Trevoor, the stretch of desolate moorland which
lay about a mile outside the town, and was so full of surprises--of
unexpected dips and trickling streams, of dangerous bogs, and stores of
fruits and berries and unknown delights--that, well though they knew it,
they had not yet discovered the half of them.  She thought of their
excursions, such as to-day's, to Wenmere Woods, and those others to
Helbarrow Tors.  They usually took a donkey and cart, and food for a
long day, when they went to this last.  Her mind travelled, too, back
over their favourite games and walks, and what she, perhaps, loved best
of all, those drives, when she would have the carriage and Prue all to
herself, and would wander with them over the face of the country for
miles.

At those times she felt no nervousness, no loneliness, nothing but pure,
unalloyed happiness.  Sometimes she would take a book with her, and when
she came to a spot that pleased her, she would turn Prue into the hedge
to graze, while she herself would stay in the carriage and read, or
dismount and climb some hedge, or tree, or gate, and gaze about her, or
lie on the heather, thinking or reading; and by-and-by she would turn
the old horse's head homewards, and arrive at last laden with
honeysuckle or dog-roses, bog-myrtle, ferns, or rich-brown bracken and
berries.



CHAPTER IX.


THE COMING OF ANNA.

The next week or two were full of change, excitement, and unrest.
No one knew what the next day might bring forth, and the children never
felt sure of anything.  Any hour might bring a surprise to them, and it
was not likely to be a pleasant surprise--of that they felt sure.
One of the changes decided on was that Dan was to go very soon--the next
term, in fact--to a public school as a boarder.

To all but Dan the news came as an overwhelming blow.  Katherine and
Elizabeth, as their aunt persisted in calling them, considered it one of
the most cruel and treacherous acts that Mrs. Pike could have been
guilty of.  Of course they blamed her entirely for it.  "Dan was to be
turned out of his home-banished--and by Aunt Pike!" they told each
other.

"I expect she will banish us next," said Betty.  "If she does, I shall
run away from school and become something--a robber, or a gipsy, or a
heroine."

But the cruellest part, perhaps, of the blow was that Dan himself did
not resent it.  In fact, he showed every sign of delight with the plan,
and was wild with excitement for the term to begin.  To the girls this
seemed rank treachery, a complete going over to the enemy, and they felt
it keenly.

"I didn't think Dan would have changed so," said Kitty dejectedly, as
she and Betty lay in their beds discussing the serious state of affairs.

"I don't know," said Betty darkly.  "_I_ thought he was very odd the
night Aunt Pike came.  First there was the rude way he spoke to me about
my making up to her, and then _he_ went and got that bottle of
embercation for her.  _I_ called _that_ sucking up to her."

"But Dan is always polite," said Kitty, warm in defence of him at once.
She might sometimes admit to herself that there was a flaw in her
brother, but she could not endure that any one else should see one;
"and he is always sorry for people when they are hurt, and it was our
fault that she was hurt."

"Yes, it was his fault really," said Betty, whose memory was a good
one--too good at times, some said--"for he was the first to kick off his
boots and leave them there."

"I know; but he didn't tell us to do the same.  And you see we had all
agreed to be polite to Aunt Pike, and you could have got the embrocation
for her if you had liked."

"But I don't see why it should be called 'polite' if Dan does it, but
'sucking up' if _I_ do it," argued Betty.

Kitty sighed.  She often wished that Betty would  not want things
explained so carefully.  She never made allowances for changes of mood
or sudden impulses.  Kitty herself so constantly experienced both, that
she could sympathize with others who did the same, and as she put it to
herself--"What can you do if you feel sorry for a person that you hated
only a little while before?"

Kitty could not understand the right and the wrong of these things, or
what to do under such circumstances.  She wished she could, for they
made her feel mean to one side or the other, and nothing was really
further from her intention.

The next arrangement made--and this was an even greater blow to them
than the "banishment" of Dan--was that Kitty and Betty were to go as day
girls to school, instead of having Miss Pooley to the house.

The plan, being Aunt Pike's, would probably have been objected to in any
case; but to Kitty, with her shy dread of strangers--particularly girls
of her own age--the prospect was appalling, and she contemplated it with
a deep dread such as could not be understood by most girls.

Betty complained loudly, but soon found consolation.  "At any rate," she
said, "we need not walk to school with Anna, and we needn't see as much
of her there as we should have to at home; and I think it will be rather
jolly to know a lot of girls."

"Do you?" sighed Kitty, looking at her sister with curious, wondering
eyes, and a feeling of awe.  "I can't think so.  I can't bear strange
girls."  It seemed to her incredible that any one should _want_ to know
strangers, or could even contemplate doing so without horror.
She envied them, though, for being able to.  "It must make one feel ever
so much more happy and comfortable," she thought, "to have nothing to be
afraid of."  She would have given a very great deal not to feel shy and
embarrassed when with strangers, and to be able to think of something to
say to them.  But she never could.  Nothing that she had to say seemed
interesting or worth saying.  Betty, with her self-confidence and fluent
tongue, was a constant source of admiration to Kitty.

"You will get on all right," she said, with another sigh; "but I was
never meant to go where there are other people."

"That is why you've got to go.  It is good for you; I heard Aunt Pike
saying so to father.  She said you were growing up shy and _gauche_.
I don't know what _gauche_ means; do you?"

"No," said Kitty, colouring.  "I expect I ought to, and I expect it is
something dreadful; but if I am happier so, why can't I go on being
_gauche_?"

"Father said you were very shy, but he didn't think you were the other
thing--_gauche_."

"Did he?" cried poor Kitty, brightening; but her face soon fell again.
"Father doesn't notice things as quickly as some people do--Aunt Pike,
and Lady Kitson, and others; and I expect they are right.  It is always
the disagreeable people and the disagreeable things that are right.
Did Aunt Pike say the same thing of you?"

"No; she said I had too much--it was a long word--too much self--self--
oh, I know, confidence--self-confidence.  I don't know what it means,
but I am sure I haven't got it; and if I have," wound up Betty
defiantly, "I _won't_ get cured of it.  Do you know what it means,
Kitty?"

"Yes," said Kitty thoughtfully, "I think I do; but I don't see how going
to the same school can cure us both."

At the end of a few days Mrs. Pike went away to get Anna, and to collect
their numerous belongings; and the doctor's household felt that it had
before it one week of glorious freedom, but only one.

In anticipation of this, their last happy free time, the children had
made plans for each day of it, intending to enjoy them to the utmost.
Somehow, though, things were different.  There was a shadow even over
their freedom--if it was not there in the morning, it fell before
night--and they returned home each day weighted with a sense of
weariness and depression.  There was the shadow, too, of Dan's
departure, and a very deep shadow it was.

"Things will never, never be the same again," said Kitty sagely.
"Dan won't know about all that we do; and when he gets a lot of boy
friends he won't care very much."

There was also the shadow of their own school and the constant
companionship of Anna, and this was a dense shadow indeed.

"It wouldn't be so bad if she was jolly and nice, but it will be like
having a spy always with us," said Betty.  "She will tell Aunt Pike
everything."

"You don't know," said Dan, to tease them.  "Anna may have grown up
quite different from what she was, and be as jolly as possible." But the
suggestion did not console the girls; to them it only seemed that Dan
was already forsaking them, that this was but another step over to the
enemy.

"She couldn't be jolly," said Betty firmly.  "She wouldn't know how, and
Aunt Pike wouldn't let her if she wanted to.  And even if she seemed so,
I shouldn't feel that I could trust her."

"Bosh!" said Dan emphatically.  "One can always tell if a person is to
be trusted or not."

"Well, I can tell that I shall _not_ trust Anna _ever_," cried Betty
viciously, roused to deep anger by Dan's championship of Anna Pike.

But Dan was not impressed.  "Oh well," he said, turning carelessly on
his heel, "if you are so narrow-minded and have made up your mind not to
like her, it is no use to say anything more."

"I am not narrow-minded," cried Betty hotly.  "I don't know what you
mean."

"I don't suppose you do," laughed Dan.  "Never mind.  Cheer up,
Elizabeth, I will give you a dictionary on your birthday."

"No, you won't, 'cause you won't have money enough," said Betty; "and--
and I wouldn't accept it if you got it."

"I'll leave you my old one when I go to school, and I advise you to
study it well before you go to Miss Richards's.  It may save you from
putting your foot in it sometimes."

"I wonder," said Betty, with a sudden thought, "if it would tell me what
self-confidence is?"

"I can tell you that," said Dan.  "Why do you want to know?"

"Oh--oh, because--but tell me first what it means, and then I will tell
you--perhaps."

"Well, it means--oh--you know--"

"No, I don't; and--and I don't believe you do either," nodding her head
very knowingly at her brother.

"Yes, I do," cried Dan hotly.  "It means having a too jolly good opinion
of yourself, and thinking you can do anything.  Now, tell me why you
wanted to know."

But Betty was walking away with her head held very high, and her cheeks
very red.  "I think it is quite time you started for the station to meet
Aunt Pike and Anna," she called back over her shoulder.

"Don't be late, whatever you do."

"But you are coming too, Bet, aren't you?"

"No," she answered frigidly, as she closed the door, "I am not," and to
herself she added, with proud indignation, "After Aunt Pike's calling me
such a name as that, I shouldn't think of going to meet her."

Kitty, Dan, and Tony were on the platform when the train arrived.
Their father had expressly wished them to go to meet their aunt and
cousin, as he was unable to; so they went to please him, they told each
other.  But they would put up with a good deal for the sake of a jaunt
to the station, and there really was some little anxiety and excitement,
too, in their hearts as to what Anna would be like.

When she had stayed with them before she had been a little fair, slight
thing, with a small face, frightened restless eyes, and a fragile body
as restless as her eyes.  Anna Pike gave one the impression of being all
nerves, and in a perpetual state of tremor.  She was said to be very
clever and intellectual, and certainly if being always with a book was a
proof of it, she was; but there were some who thought she did little
with her books beyond holding them, and that it would have been better
for her in every way if she had sometimes held a doll, or a
skipping-rope, or a branch of a tree instead.

"She was rather pretty, I think, wasn't she?" said Kitty musingly, as
they strolled up and down the platform waiting for the train.

"She was awfully skinny," said Dan.

"Will Anna be bigger than me?" asked Tony, who did not remember her.

"Oh yes, she is as old as Dan, I think; but I always feel as though she
were older even than I am.  She used to seem so grown-up and clever, and
she always did the right thing; and, oh dear, how dreadful it will be if
she is still the same."

Tony sighed.  "I wish there was somebody little, like me, to play with,"
he said wistfully; "somebody as young as me."

"But, Tony darling, you don't feel you want some one else, do you?
Why, we all play with you," cried Kitty reproachfully.

"Yes, I know; but you only pretend.  You don't think things are
really-truly, like I do."

"But I do, dear, I do, really; only yours are fairies and giants, and
mine are knights and kings and ladies," and her thoughts flashed right
away from the busy station, with its brick platform and gleaming rails,
the ordinary-looking men and women pacing up and down, and the noise and
rattle of the place, to the quiet, still woods and hurrying river, with
their mystery and calm, and to those other men and women pacing so
stately amidst the silence and beauty.  But Tony, tugging at her hand,
very soon brought her abruptly back to her real surroundings.

"It is coming! it is coming!" he cried.  "I hear it."

And a moment later, with a fast-increasing roar, the engine rounded the
curve, and gradually slowing down, drew up alongside the platform.

Mrs. Pike was one of those persons who keep their seats until all other
passengers have left the carriage, and make every one belonging to them
do the same; and Kitty and Dan had twice walked the whole length of the
train, and were just turning away, not quite certain whether they felt
relieved or not at seeing no sign of their travellers, when they heard a
well-remembered voice calling to them, and, turning, saw their aunt
standing in a carriage doorway, beckoning to them as frantically as an
armful of parcels and bags would allow her.  She retreated when she had
attracted their attention, and in her place there stepped from the
carriage a tall, lanky girl, who was evidently very shy and embarrassed
at being thrust out alone to greet her strange cousins.

It was Anna.  Though she had grown enormously, they knew her in a
moment, for the thin white face was the same, the restless eyes, the
nervous fidgeting movements of the hands and feet and body.
Her straight, light hair had grown enormously too; it was a perfect mane
now, long, and thick, and heavy--too heavy and long, it seemed, for the
thin neck and little head.  Kitty eyed it enviously, though; her own
dark hair was frizzy and thick as could be, but it never had grown, and
never would grow more than shoulder length, she feared, and she did so
admire long, straight, glossy hair.

But when she looked from her cousin's hair to her cousin, a sudden sense
of shyness came over her, and it was awkwardly enough that she advanced.

"Ought I to kiss her," she was asking herself, "on a platform like this,
and before a lot of people?  She might think it silly;" and while she
was still debating the point, she had held out her hand and shaken
Anna's stiffly, with a prim "How do you do," and that was all.

Her aunt she had overlooked entirely, until that lady recalled her
wandering wits peremptorily.  "Well, Katherine, is this the way you
greet your aunt and cousin?  Have you quite forgotten me?  Come and kiss
us both in a proper manner.--Well, Daniel, how are you?  Yes, I shall be
obliged to you if you will go in search of our luggage;" for Dan,
fearing that he, too, might be ordered to kiss them both, had shaken
hands heartily but hastily, while uttering burning desires to assist
them by finding their boxes.--"Anthony, come and be introduced to your
cousin Anna.  I dare say you scarcely remember her."

Tony kissed his severe-looking cousin obediently, but his hopes of a
playmate died there and then.

"Elizabeth, I do not see her!"

"No--o; she has not come, Aunt Pike," said Kitty lamely.  She felt
absolutely incapable at that moment of giving any reason why Betty had
absented herself, so she said no more.

"Anna was particularly anxious to meet her cousin Elizabeth," continued
Mrs. Pike.  "Being so near of an age, she hopes to make her her special
companion.--Don't you, Anna?"

"Yes, mother," said Anna, rubbing her cotton-gloved hands together
nervously, and setting Kitty's teeth on edge to such an extent that she
could scarcely speak.  But somehow the enthusiasm of Anna's actions was
not echoed in her voice.

Dan, who had rejoined them, smiled to himself wickedly as he thought of
Betty's last speech about her cousin.

"The porter is taking the luggage out to the omnibus," he said.
"Will you come out and get up?"  He led the way, and they all followed.
The big yellow 'bus with its four horses stood in the roadway outside
the platform palings.  The driver and conductor, who knew the Trenires
quite well, beamed on them, and touched their hats.

"I've kept the front seat for you, missie," said Weller, the conductor,
to Kitty, and he moved towards the short ladder placed against the 'bus
in readiness for her to mount.  "Will the other ladies go 'pon top,
too?" he asked; and Kitty, with one foot on the lower step, looked round
at her aunt to offer her her seat.

"Katherine! Katherine! what _are_ you doing?  Come down, child, at once.
You surely aren't thinking of clambering up that ladder?  Let Dan do so
if he likes, but you will please come inside with Anna and me."

Kitty's face fell visibly.  She could hardly believe, though, that she
had heard aright.  "I feel ill if I go inside, Aunt Pike," she
explained.  "Father always lets us go on top; he tells us to.  He says
it is healthier; and it is such a lovely evening, too, and the drive is
beautiful.  I am sure you would--"

"Katherine, please, I must ask you not to stand there arguing in that
rude manner with me," said Mrs. Pike with intense severity,  "Get inside
the omnibus at once.  I will speak to your father on the subject when I
get home."  And poor Kitty, so long mistress of her own actions, walked,
bitterly humiliated, under the eyes of the many onlookers, and got into
the hot, close 'bus, where the air was already heavy with the mixed
smell of straw and paint and velvet cushions, which she never could
endure.

"Anthony, you may go outside with Daniel if you prefer it, as the 'bus
is rather full inside," said Mrs. Pike, stopping him as he clambered in
after Kitty.  But Tony declined the offer.

"I would rather go with Kitty, please," he said loyally.  "I'd--I'd
rather."  He had a feeling that by so doing he was somehow helping her.

Kitty, with compressed lips and flashing eyes, took her seat.  She did
not notice who was beside her; her only object was to get as far as
possible from her aunt, for, feeling as she felt then, she could not
possibly talk to her.

"It is a _shame_ to make us go inside.  It always makes me feel ill too;
but I've always got to," whispered a low, indignant voice through the
rattling and rumbling of the 'bus.  With a start of surprise Kitty
turned quickly to see who had spoken, and found that she had seated
herself beside her cousin Anna.

For a moment Kitty stared at her, bewildered.  It could not have been
Anna who spoke, for Anna was staring absorbedly out of the window
opposite her, apparently lost in thought, or fascinated by the scenery
through which they were passing.  But just as she had determined that
she had made a mistake, a side-long glance from Anna's restless eyes
convinced her that she had not.

"Are you feeling ill now?" asked Kitty, but Anna in reply only glanced
nervously at her mother, and bestowed on Kitty a warning kick; and
Kitty, indignant with them both, could not bring herself to address
another remark to her.  All through that long, wretched drive home
Kitty's indignation waxed hotter and hotter, for she kept her gaze
studiously on the window, and the glimpses she got of all the beauty
they were passing through only served to increase it.  Here the way lay
through the soft dimness of a plantation of young larches, their green,
feathery branches almost meeting across the road; then came a long steep
hill, up which the horses walked in a leisurely way--quite delightful if
one were outside and able to gaze down at the glorious valley which
spread away and away below, until a curve in the road suddenly cut it
off from view, but infinitely wearying when every moment was spent in a
hot, stuffy atmosphere, with nothing before one's eyes but the hedge or
one's fellow-passengers.

Oh the relief in such case when the top of the hill was reached, and the
driver stirred up his horses to a canter, and the heavy 'bus covered the
level ground quickly and rumbled down the next steep hill at a good
pace.  How Kitty did hate it all now, and how she did love it
ordinarily!  Winter and summer, hitherto, she had always gone to and fro
mounted high up on the front seat, and knew every curve and corner, and
hill and dip; but best of all, perhaps, did she love that quick run down
the steep hill, when the horses cantered along at their smartest, and
the 'bus came rumbling and swaying after them, as though at any moment
it would break loose entirely and go its own wild way.  And then would
come the demurer pace as they came to the town, and the narrow streets
where sharp corners had to be turned carefully, and where, from the high
'bus-top, one could quite easily see into the funny little rooms of the
old houses on either side.  Then came the main street--to the Trenire
children fit to vie in breadth and beauty with any street in any city in
the world--and then home!

To Kitty it had always been the greatest joy to come home.  No matter
where she had stayed, or how delightful the visit had been, she had
always been glad to get home again, and her heart beat faster, and her
breath caught with something that was not merely excitement or pleasure,
at the sight of the low, broad old house in the bare, wind-swept street,
that was the only home she had known, or wanted to know.  But now, for
the first time, she felt no joy, only misery and indignation, and a
sense of hopeless, helpless resentment that all the old joy and freedom
was ended, that everything was to be altered and spoiled for them.

By degrees the 'bus emptied of all passengers but themselves, and Aunt
Pike drew nearer to Kitty.  "I hope," she said, "that things have gone
on nicely while I have been away, and that the house has been kept in a
neat and orderly fashion."

Kitty did not answer for a moment, for the simple reason that she had no
answer to give.  They had all been too much occupied in making the most
of their spell of freedom to observe how the house was kept.  "I--I
believe so," she stammered at last.

"And I hope you have arranged a nice little meal for us," went on Mrs.
Pike, "to welcome Anna on her first arrival in her new home.  I did not
say anything about it, as I thought it would be so good for you to have
the arranging of it."

At this Kitty really did jump in her seat, and her heart beat fast with
shame and dismay, for she had not only not arranged a "nice little
meal," but had never given a thought to any meal at all.

It is fair to say she had never been told that it was left to her to do
so.  When first her aunt had come Kitty had handed over to her the reins
of government, willy-nilly, and she had not thought it her duty to take
them up again in Mrs. Pike's absence; but it is to be feared that in any
case she would not have prepared a feast of welcome for Anna.  And the
result was that they would arrive tired and hungry after their long, hot
journey, and probably find no preparations at all made for them, no
welcome, not even food enough for a meal--certainly no special feast.

Kitty had not been wilfully careless.  She would have seen to things had
she thought of it; but the obstinate fact remained that, if not
wilfully, she had been culpably careless, and her heart sank with shame.
She hoped--oh, how devoutly she hoped--that Fanny had been more
thoughtful; but the prospect was slight, and for the rest of the way she
sat in a perfect panic of dread and shame.

The very moment the omnibus drew up before the house she sprang out of
it, and, regardless of what her aunt might think, rushed in and through
the house to the kitchen.

"O Fanny," she cried, desperation in face and voice; but even in that
distressful moment she remembered a former occasion when Aunt Pike's
arrival had thrown her into just such a frantic state, "what about
supper?  Aunt Pike has asked about it, and I hadn't even thought about
it; and--oh, what _can_ I do?  I suppose there is nothing in the house?"

For a second or two Fanny went on calmly and deliberately with what she
was about.  "Well, miss," she said at last in her severest tone, "there
is something, and a plenty, thanks to me and Miss Betty.  If there
'adn't a been, it wouldn't 'ave been no manner of use to come rushing
out to me now, when it's time for it to be on the table.  Of course,
when folks comes unexpected that's one thing, but--"

Kitty in her great relief did not heed Fanny's lecture in the least.
"O Fanny, you are a dear," she cried joyfully.  "I will do something for
you some day.--Hullo! Betty," for Betty at that moment came tiptoeing
into the kitchen.

"'Twas Miss Betty as first thought of it," said Fanny honestly.
"I s'pose 'twould 'ave come into my 'ead some time, but I'm bound to say
it 'adn't till Miss Betty mentioned it."

Betty beamed with pleased importance, but tried to look indifferent.
"I wanted Aunt Pike to see that we do know how to do things.  What is
Anna like?" she broke off to ask anxiously.

"She is like Anna exactly," said Kitty bluntly, "and no one else; she
never could be.  She'll never change, not if she lives to be eighty.
Come along up, and get ready.  Oh, I _am_ so glad you thought about the
supper, Betty dear.  How clever you are!  Aunt Pike would have thought
worse of me than ever if you hadn't, and--"

"Um!" responded Betty, with a toss of her head, "perhaps if Aunt Pike
knew that if it hadn't been for me she'd have had no supper, she
wouldn't say rude things about me again.  I think it's awfully hard.
If you don't do things you are scolded, and if you _do_ do them you are
called too self--self-confidential."

"I wouldn't mind what I was called," said Kitty, as she hurried away to
get ready, "as long as I could manage to do the right thing sometimes,
and not always forget till too late."



CHAPTER X.


LESSONS, ALARMS, AND WARNINGS.

The days that followed were strange and very trying.  It was not at all
easy for any of them to settle down to the new life.  Kitty, though, did
not feel the giving up of the keys and the _role_ of housekeeper as much
as she had expected to; for, in the first place, the keys had generally
been lost, and in the second, she had never really "kept house" in the
true meaning of the term, and it really was a great relief to find the
meals appearing regularly and satisfactorily without any effort on her
part, or, perhaps, one should say, without any remorse, or occasion for
remorse, for not having made any effort.

It was really a comfort, too, not to have to try to manage the servants,
or blame herself for not doing so.  But, on the other hand, they all
missed their freedom dreadfully--their freedom of speech and act, their
freedom in getting up and going to bed, in their goings and comings; for
Aunt Pike believed, quite rightly, of course, in punctuality and early
rising, and keeping oneself profitably employed, and she disapproved
strongly of their roaming the country over, as they had done, as
strongly as she disapproved of their sitting on garden walls, wandering
in and out of stables, coach-house, and kitchen, talking to the
servants, or teasing Jabez.

Jabez grew quite moped during the weeks that followed, for he was not
even allowed to come into the kitchen for a comforting cup of tea as of
old.  "And if anybody can't have a bit of a clack sometimes," groaned
poor Jabez, "nor a cup of tea neither, why he might so well be dumb to
once.  I've ackshally got to talk to the 'orses and the cat to keep my
powers of speech from leaving me."

Life seemed very dull and dreary to all the household, except, perhaps,
to Mrs. Pike and Dr. Trenire.  The latter was too busy just then to
realize the changes going on in his home; while Mrs. Pike was fully
occupied with all that lay at her hand to do.

Anna's presence did not add at all to the liveliness of the house.
She was shy and nervous.  Of Dan she was, or pretended to be, quite
afraid, and if she happened to have blossomed into talk during his
absence, she would stop the moment he appeared--a habit which annoyed
him extremely.  To Betty, who was to have been her special companion,
she showed no desire to attach herself, but to Kitty she clung in a most
embarrassing fashion, monopolizing her in a way that Kitty found most
irksome, and made Betty furious, for hitherto Kitty had been Betty's
whenever Betty needed her.  Now she was rarely to be found without Anna.
But Kitty, along with the others, never felt that she could trust Anna;
and they could not throw off the feeling that they had a spy in their
midst.

And, worst of all, the beautiful summer days glided away unappreciated,
and there were many bitter groans over what might have been had they
been alone.  They thought longingly of the excursions and picnics, the
drives, and the free happy days in the open that they might have had.

"I do think it is so silly," cried Betty, "to have one's meals always at
the same time, sitting around a table in a room in a house, when one can
enjoy them _ever_ so much more if they come at all sorts of times, and
in all sorts of places."

"Oh, but it wouldn't be right to have them like that often," said Anna
primly.  "You would have indigestion if you didn't have your meals at
regular hours."  Anna was always full of ideas as to what was right and
good for her health.

"I didn't know I had an indigestion," said Betty shortly, with a toss of
her head, "and you wouldn't either, Anna, if you didn't think so much
about it."  Which was truer than Betty imagined.  "I think it is a pity
you talk so much about such things."

In September Dan went off to school.  He was very homesick and not at
all happy when the last day came--a fact which consoled Kitty somewhat
for all the pleasure and excitement he had shown up to that point.
"If it hadn't been for Aunt Pike and Anna I believe he would have been
frightfully sorry all the time," she told herself, "instead of seeming
as though he was quite glad to go."

"You'll--you'll write to a fellow pretty often, won't you, Kit?" he
asked, coming into her room for about the fiftieth time, and wandering
about it irresolutely.  He spoke in an off-hand manner, and made a show
of looking over her bookshelves whilst he was speaking.  But Kitty
understood, and in her heart she vowed that nothing should prevent her
writing, neither health, nor work, nor other interests.  Dan wanted her
letters, and Dan should have them.

But it was after he was gone that the blow of his departure was felt
most, and then the blank seemed almost too great to be borne.  It was so
great that the girls were really almost glad when their own school
opened, that they might have an entirely new life in place of the old
one so changed.

"Though I would rather go right away, ever so far, to a boarding
school," declared Betty, "where everything and everybody would be quite,
quite different."  But Kitty could not agree to this.  It was quite bad
enough for her as it was; to leave Gorlay would be more than she could
bear.

"Hillside," the school to which they were being sent--the only one of
its kind in Gorlay, in fact--was about ten minutes' walk from Dr.
Trenire's house.  It was quite a small school, consisting of about a
dozen pupils only, several of whom were boarders; and Miss Richards (the
head of it), Miss Melinda (her sister), and a French governess
instructed the twelve.

"It is not, in the strict sense of the word, a school," Miss Richards
always remarked to the parents of new pupils.  "We want it to be
'a home from home' for our pupils, and I think I may say it is that."

"If our homes were in the least bit like it we should never want any
holidays," one girl remarked; but we know that it is almost a point of
honour with some girls never to admit--until they have left it--that
school is anything but a place of exile and unhappiness,--though when
they have left it they talk of it as all that was delightful.

Amongst the boarders, and loudest in their complaints of all they had to
endure, were Lettice and Maude Kitson, who had been placed there by
their step-mother for a year to "finish" their education before they
"came out."  It was a pity, for they were too old for the school, and it
would have been better for themselves and every one had they been sent
amongst older girls and stricter teachers, where they would not have
been the leading pupils and young ladies of social importance.
They laughed and scoffed at the usual simple tastes and amusements of
schoolgirls, and, one being seventeen and the other eighteen, they
considered themselves women, who, had it not been for their unkind
stepmother, would have been out in society now instead of at school
grinding away at lessons and studies quite beneath them.  Their talk and
their ideas were worldly and foolish too, and as they lacked the sense
and the good taste which might have checked them, they were anything but
improving to any girls they came in contact with.

Kitty had never liked either of the Kitson girls; they had nothing in
common, and everything Lettice and Maude did jarred on her.  They seemed
to her silly and vulgar, and they did little petty, mean things, and
laughed and sneered at people in a way that hurt Kitty's feelings.
Yet now, so great was her nervous dread of the school and all the
strangers she would have to meet, she felt quite pleased that there
would be at least those two familiar faces amongst them.  "And that will
show how much I dread it," she said miserably to Betty the night before.
"Think of my being glad to see the Kitsons!"

"Oh well," said Betty cheerfully, "they will be some one to speak to,
and they will tell us the ways of the school, so that we shan't look
silly standing about not knowing what to do.  They won't let the others
treat us as they treat new girls sometimes either, and that will be a
good thing," which was Betty's chief dread in going to the school.

Anna expressed no opinion on the matter at all.  She was more than
usually nervous and fidgety in her manner, but she said nothing; and
whether she greatly dreaded the ordeal, or was quite calmly indifferent
about it, no one could tell.

But the feelings of the three as they walked to the school that first
morning were curiously alike, yet unlike.  All three were very nervous.
Kitty felt a longing, such as she could hardly resist, to rush away to
Wenmere Woods and never be heard of again.  Betty was so determined that
no one should guess the state of tremor she was in, lest they should
take advantage of it and tease her, that she quite overdid her air of
calm indifference, and appeared almost rudely contemptuous.  Anna,
though outwardly by far the most nervous of the three, had her plans
ready and her mind made up.  She was not going to be put upon, and she
was not going to let any one get the better of her; at the same time she
was going to be popular; though how she was going to manage it all she
could not decide until she saw her fellow-pupils and had gathered
something of what they were like.  In the meantime nothing escaped her
sharp eyes or ears.  All that Kitty or Betty could tell her about the
school, or Miss Richards, or the girls, especially the Kitsons, she
drank in and stored up in her memory, and they would have been
astonished beyond measure could they have known how much her hasty
wandering glances told her, resting, as they did, apparently on nothing.

Before the first morning was over she knew that Helen Rawson was admired
but feared; that Joyce Pearse was the most popular girl in the school,
and had taken a dislike to herself, but liked Kitty and Betty; that
Netta Anderson was Miss Richards's favourite pupil, and that she herself
did not like Netta; and that Lettice Kitson was not very wise and not
very honourable, and that Maude was the same, but was the more clever of
the two.

To Betty the morning had been interesting, though alarming at times; to
Kitty it was all dreadful, and she went through it weighed down by a
gloomy despair at the thought that this was to go on day after day,
perhaps for years.

The most terrifying experience of all to her was the examination she had
to undergo to determine her position in the school.  Anna was used to
it, so bore it better, and to Betty it was not so appalling, but to
Kitty it was the most awful ordeal she had ever experienced.
"Having teeth out is nothing to it," she said afterwards, and her relief
when it was over was so intense that she thought nothing about the
result, and was not at all concerned about the position assigned her,
until Anna came up to her brimming over with condolences, and apologies,
and scarcely concealed delight.

"O Katherine, I _am_ so sorry, but it _really_ wasn't my fault.
I didn't know I was doing so well, and--and that they would put me in
the same class as you!  Of course I thought you would be ever so much
higher than me--being so much older."

Kitty had scarcely realized the fact before, certainly she had not been
shamed by it, but Anna's remarks and apologies roused her to a sudden
sense of mortification, and Anna's manner annoyed her greatly.

"Did you, really?" she said doubtingly.  "Well," proudly, "don't worry
about it any more.  If you don't mind, I don't," and she walked away
with her head in the air.  "I can't understand Anna," she thought to
herself; "she pretends to be so fond of me, but I feel all the time that
she doesn't like me a bit really, and she will work night and day now to
get ahead of me."  Which was exactly what Anna meant to do.  "But," she
added, with determination, "I will show her that I can work too."
Which was what Anna had not expected; but for once she had overreached
herself, and in trying to humiliate Kitty she had given her the very
spur she needed, and so had done her one of the greatest possible
kindnesses.

Betty, to her disgust and mortification, was placed in a lower class
altogether.  She had not expected to be with Kitty, but she certainly
had not expected to be placed below Anna, and the blow was a great one.
"But I'll--I'll beat her," declared Betty hotly.  "I will.  I don't
believe she is so awfully, awfully clever as they say, and nobody knows
but what I may be clever too, only people haven't noticed it yet.
I am sure I feel as if I might be."

It was unfortunate, though, for the Trenire girls that Mrs. Pike had
settled all the arrangements for their going to "Hillside;" it was
unfortunate for them too that Miss Richards and Miss Melinda placed
unquestioning reliance on what was told them, and had no powers of
observation of their own, or failed to use them, for it meant to them
that they started unfairly handicapped.  Miss Richards was warned that
she would find Dr. Trenire's daughters backward and badly taught, and
entirely unused to discipline or control.  "Of course the poor dear
doctor had not been able to give them all the attention they needed, and
he was such a gentle, kind father, perhaps _too_ kind and gentle, which
made it rather trying for others.  It was to be hoped that dear Miss
Richards would not find the children _too_ trying.  She must be very
strict with them; it would, of course, be for their own good
eventually."  "Dear Miss Richards" felt quite sure of that, and had no
doubt that she would be able to manage them.  She had had much success
with girls.  She was glad, though, to be warned that there was need of
special care--in fact, dear Lady Kitson had hinted at very much the same
thing.

So the paths of Katherine and Elizabeth were strewn with thorns and
stumbling-blocks from the outset, and, unfortunately, they were not the
girls to see and avoid them, or even guess they were there until they
fell over them.

Anna, having been brought up under her mother's eye, was, of course,
quite, quite different; Anna was really a credit to the care which had
been lavished on her.  Miss Richards and Miss Melinda did not doubt it;
they declared that it was evident at the first glance, and acted
accordingly.  Which was, no doubt, pleasant for Anna, but, on the
whole, turned out in the end worse for her than for her cousins.

Anna certainly had been well trained in one respect--she could learn her
home lessons and prepare her home work under any conditions, it seemed,
and she always did them well.  Kitty had an idea, a very foolish one, of
course, that she could only work when alone and quiet, say in her
bedroom, or in the barn, or lying in the grass in the garden, or in the
woods.  All of which was inelegant, unladylike, and nonsensical.
Kitty must get the better of such ideas at once, and must learn her
lessons as Anna did, sitting primly at the square table in the playroom.

Anna learnt her lessons by repeating them half aloud, and making a
hissing noise through her teeth all the time.  The sound alone drove
Kitty nearly distracted, while the sitting up so primly to the table
seemed to destroy all her interest in the lesson and her power of
concentrating her mind on the study in hand.

"I can't learn in this way, Aunt Pike," she pleaded earnestly; "I can't
get on a bit.  I dare say it is silly of me, but my own way doesn't do
any one any harm, and I can learn my lessons in half the time, and
remember them better."

"Katherine, do not argue with me, but do as I tell you.  It is the right
way for a young lady to sit to her studies, and it will strengthen not
only your back-bone, but your character as well.  You are sadly
undisciplined."

So Kitty, irritated, sore, and chafing, struggled on once more with her
lessons.  But to get her work done she had, after all, to take her books
to bed with her, and there, far into the night, and early in the
morning, she struggled bravely not only to learn, but to learn how to
learn, which is one of the greatest difficulties of all to those who
have grown up drinking in their knowledge not according to school
methods.

Nothing but her determination not to let Anna outstrip her could have
made her persevere as she did at this time, and she got on well until
Anna, whether consciously or unconsciously she alone knew, interfered to
stop her.

"Mother! mother!" Anna in a straight, plain dressing-gown, her hair in
two long plaits down her back, tapped softly in the dead of night at her
mother's door, and in a blood-curdling whisper called her name through
the keyhole.

Mrs. Pike roused and alarmed, flew at once at her daughter's summons.
"What is the matter?  Are you ill?  I thought you were drinking rather
much lemonade.  Jump into my bed, and I will--"

"No, it isn't me, mother, I am all right; it's--it's the girls.  I saw a
light shining under their door, and I was so frightened.  Do you think
it's a fire?"

Considering the awfulness of that which she feared, Anna was curiously
deliberate and calm.  It did not seem to have struck her that her wisest
course would have been to have first rushed in and roused her cousins,
and have given them at least a chance of escape from burning or
suffocation.  Now, too, instead of running with her mother to their
help, she crept into the bed and lay down, apparently overcome with
terror, though with her ears very much on the alert for any sounds which
might reach them.  Perhaps she shrank from the sight that might meet
her eyes when the door was opened.

Mrs. Pike, far more agitated than her daughter, without waiting to hear
any more, rushed along the corridor and up the stairs to the upper
landing where all the children's rooms were, and flinging herself on
Kitty's door, had burst it open before either Betty or Kitty could
realize what was happening.  Betty, seriously frightened, sprang up in
her bed with a shriek.  Kitty dropped her book hurriedly and sprang out
on the floor.

"What is the matter?" she cried, filled with an awful fear.  "Who is
ill?  Father?  Tony?"  But at the violent change in her aunt's
expression from alarm to anger her words died on her lips.

"How dare you!  How dare you!  You wicked, disobedient, daring girl,
setting the place on fire and risking our lives, and wasting candles,
and--and you know I do not allow reading in bed."

"I wasn't reading," stammered Kitty--"I mean, not stories.  I was only
learning my lessons.  I _must_ learn them somehow, and I can't--I really
can't--learn them downstairs, Aunt Pike, with Anna whistling and hissing
all the time; it is no use.  I have tried and tried, and I _must_ know
them.  I wasn't setting the place on fire; it is quite safe.  I had
stood the candle-stick in a basin.  I always do."

"Always do!  Do you mean to say that you are in the habit of reading in
bed?"

"Yes," said Kitty honestly, "we always have.  Father does too."

"Even after you knew I did not allow it?" cried Aunt Pike, ignoring
Kitty's reference to her father.

"I didn't know you didn't allow it," said Kitty doggedly.  "I had never
heard you say anything about it; and as father did it, I didn't think
there was any harm."

"No harm! no harm to frighten poor Anna so that she flew from her bed
and came rushing through the dark house to me quite white and trembling.
She was afraid your room was on fire, and was dreadfully frightened of
course.  She will probably feel the ill effects of the shock for some
time."

Betty, having got over her fright, had been sitting up in bed all this
time embracing her knees.  When Anna's name was mentioned her eyes began
to sparkle.  "If Anna had come in here first to see, she needn't have
trembled or been frightened," she remarked shrewdly.

"Anna naturally ran to her mother," said Mrs. Pike sharply.

"Anna naturally ran to sneak," said Betty to herself, "and I don't
believe she really thought there was a fire at all, and I'll tell her so
when I get her by herself."  Aloud she said, "I wonder what made her get
out of bed and look under our door.  She couldn't have smelt fire, for
of course there wasn't any to smell."

"Be quiet, Elizabeth.--Remember, Katherine," her aunt went on, turning
to her, "that if ever I hear of or see any behaviour of this kind again,
I shall have you to sleep in my room, and put Anna in here with
Elizabeth."  Which was a threat so full of horror to both the girls that
they subsided speechless.

"I think," whispered Betty, as soon as their aunt's footsteps had ceased
to sound--"no, I don't think, I know that Anna is the _very meanest_
sneak I ever met."

"I hope I shall never know a meaner," groaned Kitty; "but I--I won't be
beaten by her.  I won't! I won't!"

"And I'll beat her too," snapped Betty.

"I am ashamed that she is a relation," said Kitty in hot disgust.

"She isn't a real one," said Betty scornfully, "and for the future I
shan't count her one at all.  We won't own such a mean thing in the
family."

"I wonder why she is so horrid," sighed Kitty, who was more distressed
by these things than was Betty.  "We never did her any harm.
Perhaps she can't help it.  It must be awful to be mean, and a sneak,
and to feel you can't help it."

"Why doesn't Aunt Pike teach her better?  She is always telling us what
to do, and that it is good for us to try and be different, and--and all
that sort of thing."

"But Aunt Pike wouldn't believe that Anna is mean; she thinks she is
perfection," said Kitty.

"Oh, well, I s'pose a jewel's a duck in a toad's eye," misquoted Betty
complacently; "at least, that is what Fanny said, and I think she is
right.  Fanny often is."

When they met the next day Betty gave her cousin another shock, perhaps
more severe than the one she had had during the night, for frankness
always shocked Anna Pike.

"I do think, Anna," she said gravely, "it is a pity you let yourself do
such mean things.  Of course you didn't really think our room was on
fire last night, and every one but Aunt Pike knows you were only
sneaking.  If you go on like that, you won't be able to stop yourself
when you want to, and nobody will ever like you."

Anna's little restless eyes grew hard and unpleasant-looking.  "I have
more friends than you have, or Kitty either," she retorted, "and I am
ever so much more friendly with the girls at school than you are."
A remark which stung Miss Betty sharply, for though she did not like
either Lettice or Maude Kitson, she resented the way in which they had
gone over to Anna, with whom Lettice in particular had struck up a
violent friendship--the sort of friendship which requires secret
signals, long whisperings in corners, the passing of many surreptitious
notes, and is particularly aggravating to all lookers-on.

Kitty saw it all too, of course, but instead of feeling annoyed as Betty
did by it, she felt a sense of relief that Anna had ceased to be her
shadow, and had attached herself to some one else.

"If Anna isn't sorry some day for being so chummy with Lettice," said
Betty seriously, "Lettice will be for being so chummy with Anna."
But Kitty could not see that.  She did not care for Lettice, but it
never occurred to her that her behaviour was worse than foolish, or that
she should warn Anna against the friendship.  Not that it would have
done any good, probably, if she had.

It might have been better for them all, though, if Kitty had been more
suspicious and alert, for she might then have seen what was happening,
and perhaps have avoided the catastrophe to which they were all
hastening.  But, of course, if you have no suspicions of people, you
cannot be on your guard against something that you do not know exists;
and Kitty suspected nothing, not even when Betty came home one day with
an unpleasant tale of foolishness to tell.

"I won't walk home with Anna any more," she cried hotly.  "She asks me
to go with her, and then tries to get rid of me.  I know why she wanted
to, though: she had a letter to post and didn't want me to see it.
I suppose," indignantly, "she thought I would try to read the address,
or would sneak about it!"

"You must have made a mistake," said Kitty.  "It is too silly to think
she should want to get rid of you while she posted a letter.
Why shouldn't she post one?  I don't see anything in it."

"Well, _I_ do," said Betty solemnly.  "To tell you isn't really
sneaking, is it?  Anna posts letters for Lettice Kitson--letters to
people she isn't allowed to write to--and she takes letters to her.
She does really, Kitty, and I think Anna ought to be spoken to.
Lettice was nearly expelled from her last school for the same thing.
Violet told me so."

"Nonsense," cried Kitty scornfully.  "I believe the girls make up
stories, and you shouldn't listen to them, Betty; it is horrid."

"I am sure Violet wouldn't make up stories," said Betty; "and if Lettice
does such things, Anna ought not to help her.  You should stop her,
Kitty.  Tell her we won't have it."

"O Betty, don't talk so.  Don't tell me any more that I ought to do.
It seems to me I ought to do everything that is horrid!  And why should
I look after Anna?  She never takes any notice of what I say; and after
all it is nothing very bad--nothing to make a fuss about, I mean.
I haven't seen anything myself."

"Well, _I_ think it is a good deal more than nothing," said Betty
gravely; "and I wish you would see, Kitty, I wish you would notice
things more."

"But what good could I do?  What can I say?" cried Kitty distractedly,
growing really distressed.

"Say?  Oh, say that we won't stand it, and let her see that we won't,"
said Betty.  "We ought to be able to do that."



CHAPTER XI.


POOR KITTY!

Only a few days later Kitty's eyes were opened for her, and opened
violently.  Autumn had come on apace.  The days were short now, and the
evenings long and dark.  Already the girls were counting that there were
only five or six weeks before Dan came home; and at school there was
much talk of the break-up party, and the tableaux which were to be the
chief feature of the festivity this year.  Kitty was to take part in one
tableau at least.  She was to be Enid in one of her dearly loved
Arthurian legends--Enid, where, clad in her faded gown, she met Queen
Guinevere for the first time, who,

    "descending, met them at the gates,
   Embraced her with all welcome as a friend,
   And did her honour as the prince's bride."

And Kitty was to wear a wig such as she had always longed for, with
golden plaits reaching to her knees, and she was almost beside herself
with joy.

On the evening that the storm broke, she, little dreaming of what was
coming, was doing her home work and taking occasional dips into her
volume of Tennyson.  Betty had finished her home lessons and was curled
up in a chair reading.  Anna was not in the room; in fact, she had left
it almost as soon as they had settled down to their work after tea as
usual.  It was now nearly supper-time.

Mrs. Pike was absent at a Shakespeare reading.  Dr. Trenire had been out
all day, a long round over bleak country, and had not been home more
than an hour.  Kitty had heard him come, and had longed--as she had
never longed in the days when she was free to do as she liked--to go and
superintend his meal, and hear all about his day.  But she knew what a
to-do there would be if she did not stay where she was and do her
lessons, and she had just lost herself again in the story of "Enid,"
when, to her surprise, she heard her father's footsteps coming along the
passage and stopping at the door of the school-room.  She was even more
surprised when, on opening the door, he said very quietly and gravely,
"Kitty, will you come to me in my study at once?  I wish to speak to
you."

She had looked up with a smile, but the expression on her father's face
caused her smile to die away, and left her perplexed and troubled.

"What was it?  Was Dan in trouble--or ill--or--or what had happened?"

It never occurred to her as she got up and hurried after her father to
his room that the trouble might be of her causing.  When she reached the
study she found Dr. Trenire standing by the table holding a letter which
he was reading.  He looked up from it when she entered, and in answer to
the alarmed questioning in her eyes, he, after hesitating a moment, put
the letter into her hand.  "Read that," he said sternly, "and tell me
what it means."

Kitty took the letter, but she was so bewildered and troubled by her
father's manner, and the mystery, and her own dread, that she gazed at
it for seconds, unable to take in a word that it contained.

"Well?"

"I--I haven't read it yet, father," she stammered.  "Do tell me; is it--
is it anything about Dan?"

Dr. Trenire looked at her very searchingly.  "This is not the time for
trifling, Kitty," he said.  "The letter is about you, I am sorry to say.
I am so shocked, so grieved, and astonished at what it tells me, that
I--I cannot make myself believe it unless you tell me that I must.
Read it."

Kitty read it this time--read it with the blood rushing over her face
and neck, her eyes smarting, her cheeks tingling; and as she more and
more clearly grasped the meaning, her heart beat hot and fast with
indignation.

When she looked up, her hurt, shamed eyes struck reproach to Dr.
Trenire's heart.  "Father, you didn't--you didn't think that I--I--that
what that letter says is true?"  The feeling that he had, if only for a
moment, done so hurt her far more than did the letter, which was from
Miss Richards.

"It had been discovered," wrote Miss Richards, evidently in a great
state of wrath and indignation, "that one of the boarders had been in
the habit of writing to and receiving surreptitious letters from a
person with whom she had been forbidden to correspond.  This she could
only have accomplished with the aid of some one outside the school.
On that very evening a letter had been intercepted, and the messenger
almost caught; but though she had escaped she had been partially
recognized by the governess, who had fortunately discovered these
shocking and flagrantly daring misdoings, and the governess had no doubt
in her mind that the culprit was Dr. Trenire's elder daughter."
Miss Richards was deeply grieved to have to write such unpleasant
tidings to him, but she begged he would make strict inquiries into the
matter at once.  In the meantime Miss Lettice Kitson, who was forbidden
to leave her room, refused to make any communication on the matter.

"How dare she!" cried Kitty.  "How dare she accuse me of doing such a
thing!  I hardly ever speak to Lettice.  We are not at all friendly, and
Miss Richards knows it.  I have never liked her, and--and," she broke
off hotly--"as if, even if I did like her, I would behave so.
Father, you know I wouldn't; don't you?" she entreated passionately.

"Have you any idea who the real 

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