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 f.a.n.n.y 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 pa.s.sed 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 circ.u.mstances. 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 embarra.s.sed 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 antic.i.p.ation 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."