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 culprit is?" asked her father, greatly troubled. In his heart he implicitly believed her, but he had to inquire into the matter without prejudice. "If you have a suspicion, do give me the clue, that you may be cleared. Of course it wouldn't be Betty—"
"Oh no, of course not," cried Kitty emphatically. "She has been in the playroom with me all the evening; besides, Betty wouldn't behave so. Why, only the other day she was fearfully disgusted with—"
Kitty stopped abruptly, a flood of colour pouring over her face as a sudden suspicion rushed over her mind with overwhelming force.
Dr. Trenire was watching her closely. "You have some suspicion?"
Kitty opened her lips, then closed them. "I—I have nothing I can say, father," she said at last in a muffled tone.
"But you must clear yourself, Kitty," he said gravely.
"Lettice Kitson can clear me," she replied. "She knows, and of course she will tell Miss Richards when she hears that they are accusing me. You believe me; don't you, father?" she asked again, looking up at him pleadingly.
"Certainly, Kitty," he said heartily, unable to withstand the appeal in her gray eyes. "I would not believe you capable of such dishonourable conduct unless you yourself told me you were guilty."