"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.