Presently tea was brought in, and for nearly half an hour Kitty sat holding tea and bread and b.u.t.ter, trying her best to swallow both, but vainly. Miss Hammond did not appear at tea. She had only just arrived, Miss Pidsley explained, and was tired. The other pupils had not yet come; there were only four of them, and they travelled by later trains from higher up the line.
After tea, Kitty, who was to have a room to herself that term as there was no room-mate for her, was shown her little bare bedroom, and there Aunt Pike said her farewells, and left her alone amidst her boxes; and there she remained crying and crying her heart out, her boxes untouched, everything forgotten but her own overpowering misery. "She could not bear it," she moaned, "she could not bear it!" She thought of her father, and Tony, and Betty, and felt sure her heart must break.
"Poor child! We all have to bear it, dear, once in our lives, and some of us many times," said a soft voice very quietly, while a soft hand was laid on her bowed head.
Kitty was so startled that she forgot her disfigured face and looked up; and when she had once looked, and her eyes met the kind eyes gazing into hers, she did not mind, for they were misty too with sympathy.
"You remind me so of the day that I first went away to school, Katherine. You are Katherine, aren"t you?"
"Yes," murmured the owner of the name; "but they always call me Kitty at home, all but Aunt Pike."
"May I call you Kitty?"
"Please do," said Kitty eagerly.
"Well, dear, I want you to unpack your things now, and try to make your room less bare and unhomelike. It will look so different when you have your own pretty things about it, and will seem more your own."
"I don"t want it to," said Kitty miserably. "It isn"t home, and it never could be; in fact, I don"t want it to."
"Oh, come now, Kitty dear, don"t talk like that; call up your courage, and make the best of things. It is only for a time, only for a little time," said wily Miss Hammond; "but however short it is, it is always better to try and make it a pleasant time to look back upon. Think of that, Kitty; always when you are hesitating and feel tempted to be disagreeable, or to make things disagreeable, think of the future, and what the present will be like to look back upon."
Kitty was impressed. She looked up with a brighter, more interested face.
"Have you a mother and father?"
"Mother is dead," said Kitty softly.
"Poor child," said Miss Hammond, laying her cool fingers against Kitty"s hot cheek. "For your father"s sake then, dear, try to be as brave and cheerful as you can. It is sad enough for him, I am sore, to have this parting, but to know that you are grieving and unhappy will double his sadness. Besides which," she went on thoughtfully, "you know he is paying a good deal of money for your education here, and for his sake you should try to get all the good you can from what he is doing for you. Doesn"t the thought of working hard for his sake comfort you?"
"Oh yes," sighed Kitty eagerly, clutching at any kind of comfort, at anything she could do for those she loved. "Oh yes, it will. I--I hadn"t thought of that; but I feel now as if I must work and work--"
then she broke off, embarra.s.sed, and actually laughed at herself.
"There, I knew you had plenty of spirit," cried Miss Hammond delightedly. "Now I am going to unpack some of my boxes, and then they are going to bring me some tea to my room. Will you come and join me, dear? I am sure you can manage another tea."
"Oh yes, thank you," smiled Kitty, "I am sure I can. I would love to come."
Left alone, Kitty began at once to unpack and arrange her belongings.
She felt a little choky as she took out and looked at the photographs and the various little parting gifts that had been given her, particularly when she came across a piece of spar that Tony, without saying a word to any one, must have wrapped up and tucked in amongst her things as a pleasant surprise for her. It was a very pretty bit that he had himself found, and was immensely proud of. Kitty"s eyes filled as she held the little cold stone and kissed it. Then she hung up a calendar that Betty had given her, one of her own manufacture. "I shall soon be able to mark off one day," she thought with some relief.
Her room grew to look so different and so nice that she became quite interested, and rather a long time had elapsed before she tidied herself and went out in search of Miss Hammond"s room. It was not difficult to find, for it was on the same landing as her own, and had Miss Hammond"s name painted on the door.
"Come in," said a voice in answer to her knock. "Come in. I was just about to begin without you. Sit down here, dear, in this low chair by the table. We will have a "plate tea" and a drawing-room tea combined;"
and Kitty dropped gladly into a pretty low chair beside the tea-table, which was drawn up to the fire, and Miss Hammond drew up her chair to the other side.
"Oh, what a grand thing tea is! I love it," she exclaimed with a sigh of pleasure. It was said so girlishly and impulsively that Kitty laughed as she agreed.
"Pamela Peters has come," said Miss Hammond a moment later, "and I have asked her to tea too."
Kitty felt just a little feeling of disappointment. She did not want to meet any more strangers then; she was tired and shy, and she knew that her eyes were still swelled. She wanted, too, to have Miss Hammond to herself--she was so sympathetic and understanding, and so bright and interesting. Kitty had never before met any one like her, and was charmed.
"I will not say I want you two to be friends, or that I think you will like each other, for I know that that is the surest way to make you determine you never could, would, or should be. But I do think you will like Pamela, and I thought it would be nice for you to get to know one of your future companions a little before meeting them all together."
Kitty could not but agree. One stranger now, with Miss Hammond to break the ice, was infinitely preferable to four by-and-by, when she would be alone. And then came a knock at the door, and Pamela Peters walked in.
Pamela was a taller and altogether larger girl than Kitty. She looked rather older too. Perhaps a certain air of self-possession gave one that impression. Kitty gazed at her first with interest and then with wonder, for she looked as smiling and happy as though she had just reached home for the holidays, instead of returning to school for the term. She had to check her surprise while Miss Hammond introduced them and made room for Pamela at the table, but it soon returned again with double force.
"I am very glad to see you," said Pamela heartily, turning to Kitty again. "Isn"t it jolly to be back?"
"Jolly!--what!--isn"t it what?" stammered Kitty, at a loss to understand her.
Miss Hammond laughed. "Kitty Trenire thinks it anything but jolly; her heart is miles away from here; but I hope that in time she will find something here to care for too." And even Kitty actually felt that in time perhaps she might. In that cosy little room, and with those two new friends, it did not seem so absolutely impossible; but when Kitty"s thoughts flew to Miss Pidsley, the bare, unhomelike room downstairs, and the dreary road outside, her mind began to waver, and she felt anything but hopeful.
"I _am_ so glad to be back," sighed Pamela, with genuine pleasure.
She was not exaggerating in the least--even Kitty could see that.
"But," she added, "if you have a nice home and people to leave, it must be awfully hard. I expect it is what I feel at the end of term when I have to leave here."
"Oh, it is much worse than that; it must be," gasped Kitty, her astonishment overcoming her shyness. "But you are laughing. You really love going home, of course?"
"No, I don"t. I am miserable. You see, I have no real home, only a guardian, an old man, who doesn"t want me any more than I want to go, and is just as anxious as I am for the holidays to be over. He is old, and an invalid too, poor old man, and he never will have any one to stay in the house, or allow me to; so it is dull, and one doesn"t feel very overjoyed at going home to it. I can a.s.sure you I find it much more exciting to come back to school. I suppose you have brothers and sisters and a real home?" looking across at Kitty with wistful eyes.
"Oh yes!" said Kitty, and then she fell to talking of them; and Miss Hammond and Pamela listened with such interest and laughter to her account of their escapades and adventures, that Kitty talked on and on, until at last they were interrupted by a cab drawing up before the house, and Miss Hammond had to go to welcome the new arrivals.
"I feel as though I knew Betty and Dan and Tony already," said Pamela as they strolled down the corridor to their rooms. "I wish I did. And your father must be a perfect dear, I think."
"He is," said Kitty warmly, but with a catch in her voice; and from that moment she loved Pamela. "I do wish," she said impulsively, "I do wish you could come and stay with us, and know them all. There isn"t very much to see at Gorlay, but there are beautiful places all round it, and we could have some jolly times."
"I"d love to come," said Pamela heartily. "I know I should enjoy myself tremendously, I feel it in my bones. But don"t ask me if you don"t really mean it, for I shall come, I tell you plainly."
Kitty laughed, actually laughed quite gaily, and made up her mind that it should not be her fault if Pamela did not have at least one happy holiday.
The next day the girls were allowed to write home to announce their safe arrival. Kitty wrote to her father a letter full of eagerness and promises, and longings for the holidays, which made Dr. Trenire smile and sigh as he laid it away in his pocket-book, and made the house seem emptier and less itself even than it had done before. In with her father"s letter Kitty put one for Betty. It was the first that young person had ever received, and it so filled her with a sense of importance that Anna and Tony said she was almost unbearable all the rest of the day. How many times she read it over no one could have counted, but at every opportune and inopportune moment it was drawn out of her pocket, until at last it grew quite frayed at the edges, and, though scarcely a word it contained was confided to the others, Betty read it again and again with compressed lips and frowning brows, and an air of seriousness that nearly drove them frantic.
There was not much in it either to give rise to all this.
"Dearest Betty," wrote Kitty, "I have so much I want to say that I don"t know what to say first. I am very lonely, but one day and night are over, and one of the girls is very nice, I think. She is called Pamela Peters, and I want to bring her home with me for the holidays, because she has no father or mother, or home, or anything but a guardian, a very cross old man, and I want her to see what jolly times we have. I think I shall like another girl too, called Hope Carey. She is quite little, about your age, and is very unhappy. Her mother was very ill when she left home, and she is always thinking about her and fretting. I think it was very cruel to send her back until her mother was better. I do feel so sorry for her.
"One of the first things I did was to take off my gray stockings and put them all away. I shall give them to one of the maids. It is lovely to be without the hateful things. I wonder what you are all doing at this very minute, and if you are thinking of me. I am always thinking of you all the time, and saying, "Another minute gone, another hour gone," but it only seems to make the time pa.s.s more slowly. I have a bedroom to myself, I am glad to say, and it looks very nice with my things about it, but of course I don"t really care for it at all. I think Miss Pidsley isn"t as nasty as I thought she was when Aunt Pike was with her.
I think she is ill, or worried, or something, and not so very cross.
Miss Hammond, the other princ.i.p.al, is a dear. I like her very much.
We are all going out shopping one day with Miss Hammond. We are allowed to go on one Wednesday afternoon each month. Sometimes she takes the girls to see something, or to a concert, instead of going shopping.
I do not want to buy anything for myself, but I think I shall get some flowers for Miss Hammond, and something for Hope, she is so unhappy, and she has very little pocket-money. We go for excursions in the summer and have theatricals at Christmas, and you and father will be invited to those. It is rather nice, isn"t it? But of course I don"t take any real interest in it. I hate being here, but I am going to work hard to make the time pa.s.s. I hope Anna is better. Give Tony my love, and tell him he was a perfect dear to give me his precious piece of spar.
I shall always take it with me wherever I go. I will write to him next time. Mind you write and tell me everything, and give my love to f.a.n.n.y, and Jabez, and Grace, and kiss Prue and Billy for me. Kiss Prue on her dear old cheek and her soft nose.--Your loving sister,
"Kitty."
CHAPTER XVII.