Kitty knew it was her duty to check Emily"s rude way of speaking of her aunt, but a common trouble was uniting them, and she felt she could not be severe then.
"Doesn"t father know yet?" she asked.
"No, miss."
"Poor father! Has Aunt Pike really come to _stay_, Emily?"
"I can"t make out for certain, miss; but if she isn"t going to stay now, she is coming later on. I gathered that much from the way she talked.
She said it didn"t need a very clever person to see that "twas high time somebody was here to look after things, instead of me being with my "ead out of win--I mean, you all out racing the country to all hours of the night, and nothing in the house fit to eat--"
Kitty groaned.
"I"ve got to go and get the spare-room ready as soon as she comes out of it," went on Emily. "A pretty time for anybody to have to set to to sweep and dust."
Kitty, though, could not show any great sympathy there; having to sweep and dust seemed to her at that moment such trifling troubles. "Where is she now, Emily?"
"In the spare-room."
"Oh, the dust under the bed!" groaned Kitty. "She is sure to see it; it blows out to meet you every time you move!"
"Never mind that now," said Dan; "it is pretty dark everywhere. But we had better do a bunk and clean ourselves up a bit before she sees us,"
and he set the example by kicking off his shoes and disappearing like a streak up the stairs.
In another moment the hall was empty, save for eight very dirty shoes and the pile of severe-looking luggage.
To convince Aunt Pike that her presence and care were absolutely unnecessary was the one great aim and object which now filled them all, and as a means to this end their first idea was to dress, act, and talk as correctly and unblamably as boys and girls could. So, by the time the worthy lady was heard descending, they were all in the drawing-room, seated primly on the stiffest chairs they could find, and apparently absorbed in the books they gazed at with serious faces and furrowed brows. To the trained eye the "high-water marks" around faces and wrists were rather more apparent and speaking than their interest in their books. Their heads, too, were strikingly wet and smooth around their brows, but conspicuously tangled and unkempt-looking at the back.
However, on the whole they appeared well-behaved and orderly, and the expression of welcome their faces a.s.sumed 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 acc.u.mulated 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 f.a.n.n.y had returned; but f.a.n.n.y 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 b.u.t.ter 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 f.a.n.n.y, 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 f.a.n.n.y 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, f.a.n.n.y," 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 f.a.n.n.y, "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 n.o.body else don"t consider him, well, I _must_," and with this parting thrust f.a.n.n.y left the kitchen to go to her bedroom.