"Dan!" cried Kitty, stopping and looking back at him anxiously.
She remembered again then that she had not seen Dan since her return.
"Did he go out?"
"Yes, he went to catch some fishes for daddy"s supper. He heard you tell Betty to have a nice one ready, and he said, "There"s sure to be nothing nice in the house; there never is. I"ll go and catch some trout," and he went. Do you think he was out in all that funder and lightning?" Then, seeing Kitty"s startled look, Tony grew frightened too. "You don"t fink he is hurt, do you, Kitty?" he asked anxiously.
"You don"t fink Dan has been struck, do you?"
But at that moment, to their intense relief, Dan himself crossed the hall. From his appearance he might have been actually in the stream, getting the trout out without rod or line. Water was running off his hat, his clothes, and his boots. Tony heard it squishing with every step he took, and thought how splendid and manly it seemed.
Kitty called out to him, but Dan did not stay to talk.
"Where"s father?" he asked, turning a very flushed but very triumphant face towards them, and waving his basket proudly.
"In the dining-room," said Kitty, and Dan hastened on. His face fell a little, though, when he saw the table, and his father already eating.
"I"m awfully sorry I"m late," he said disappointedly. "I thought I should have been in heaps of time. I"ve got you some jolly fine trout, father. I meant them for your supper. Just look! Aren"t they beauties?" and he thrust his basket over the table and held it right under his father"s nose. The mud and green slime dripped on tablecloth and silver and on the bread, and even on Dr. Trenire"s plate and the food he was eating.
The doctor"s much-tried patience gave way at last. "Look at the mess you are making--all over my food too! Look at the filth you have brought in!" he exclaimed angrily. "Take it away! take it away!
What do you mean by coming into the room in that condition, bringing a filthy thing like that and pushing it under my very nose when you see I am eating? And why, Dan, once more, are you not here and decently neat, when a meal is ready? It is perfectly disgraceful. Here am I, and supper has been on the table I don"t know how long, and only one of you is ready to sit down with me. Anthony is in bed, or somewhere else, Kitty is racing the house to find him, and you--I am ashamed of you, sir, for coming into a room in such a condition. You are perfectly hopeless. Here, take away my plate, take everything; you have quite spoilt my appet.i.te. I couldn"t eat another mouthful at such a table!"
and Dr. Trenire rose in hot impatience and flung out of the room.
For a second Dan seemed unable to believe his ears, then without a word he closed his basket and walked away. He was more deeply hurt than he had ever been in his life before, and his face showed it. Kitty and Tony, hesitating in the hall, saw it, and their eyes filled with tears.
"Throw it away, will you?" he said in a choked voice, holding out the unfortunate basket to Kitty.
Kitty, knowing how she would have felt under similar circ.u.mstances, took it without looking at him; instinctive delicacy told her not to.
"Father didn"t mean it," she whispered consolingly. "You will come down and have some supper when you have changed, won"t you?"
They were not a demonstrative family; in fact, any lavishly expressed sympathy or affection would have embarra.s.sed them; but they understood each other, and most of them possessed in a marked degree the power of expressing both feelings without a word being spoken.
Dan understood Kitty, but it was too soon to be consoled yet. "No," he said bitterly, "I have had supper enough, thank you," and hurried away very fast.
It really did seem as if Kitty was not to reach the Supper-table that night. Telling Tony to go in and begin his meal, she flew off with the basket, and, heedless of anything but Dan"s request, was just about to fling it away--fish, basket, and all--when she paused. It was a very good basket, and Dan had no other. Kitty hesitated, then opened it and looked in. Six fine trout lay at the bottom on a bed of bracken and wet moss, evidently placed so that they could look their best.
The sight of Dan"s little arrangements brought the tears to her eyes.
No, she could not throw away what he had taken so much pride in.
She turned back and went to the kitchen. "f.a.n.n.y," she said, "will you cook these for father"s breakfast? Dan has caught them for him."
"And fine and proud he was too," said f.a.n.n.y, looking in at Dan"s catch.
"He was, but he isn"t now. I wish," with a deep sigh, "we didn"t always do things the wrong way. I wonder why nothing ever comes quite right with us?" Then she turned away hastily, that Emily, who at that moment came into the kitchen, might not see the tears that would start to her eyes.
When at last Kitty sat down to the meal which she no longer wanted, every one else had left the table. She was not sorry, for it saved her from having to make a pretence of eating, and left her free to indulge in her own moods. It gave her time, too, to think over all that had happened, and might yet happen.
Before she went up to bed, though, she got a tray, and collecting on it a tempting meal, carried it to Dan"s room. She hoped he would let her in, for she badly needed a talk with him, but just as she was about to knock at his door the murmur of voices within arrested her attention.
Whom could Dan have got in there? she wondered in great surprise.
Tony was in bed, and Betty was in her room. She listened more closely, and nearly dropped the tray in her astonishment, for the voice she heard was her father"s, and she had never before known him go to their rooms to talk to them.
For a moment her heart sank with dread. Was he still angry? Was he scolding poor Dan again? he could hardly think so, for it was so unlike him to be harsh or severe with any of them.
Then, as the voice reached her again, though she caught only the tone of it, and not a word that was said, she knew that all was right, and with a sudden lightening of her heart, and a sense of happiness, she quietly crept away to her own room. All the time she was undressing she listened alertly for the sound of her father"s footsteps, but she had been in bed some time before they pa.s.sed down the corridor. "They must be having a nice long talk," she thought, as she lay listening, in a state of happy drowsiness; and she was almost in the land of Nod when a sudden thought turned her happiness to dismay, and drove all sleep from her.
"Oh!" she cried, springing up in her bed, "oh, how stupid of me!
How perfectly dreadfully stupid of me!"
"Whatever is the matter?" demanded Betty crossly. "I was just beginning a most beautiful dream, and now you have sent it right away."
"Never mind your dream," groaned Kitty. "That"s nothing compared with that letter. I did mean to get him to write it to-night, and I would have posted it, so that it could reach almost as soon as the other, and--and I _never_ did it, I never even asked him to write it, and now the post has gone, and--"
"Whatever are you talking about?" interrupted Betty impatiently.
"Why, the letter to Aunt Pike, of course. I was going to coax father to write another letter to her to-night, to say it was all a mistake, that we didn"t want her, and--"
"Oh, that"s all right," answered Betty coolly. "Don"t worry. I have written to Aunt Pike and told her all that, and I posted it myself to make sure of its going. She will get it almost as soon as she gets--"
"Betty, you haven"t?"
"Yes, I have," said Betty quietly. "Why not? I am sure it was best to.
f.a.n.n.y wouldn"t live with her, I know, and Jabez said it would be more than his life was worth, and you know father hates changing servants, so I wrote and told her exactly all about it. I wrote quite plainly, and I think she will understand."
"O Betty, you shouldn"t have. What _will_ father say?"
"Father will be very glad, I think. He hates writing letters himself."
"Um--m!" commented Kitty dubiously, but said no more, for at that moment Dan"s door was opened, and she heard her father"s steps pa.s.s lightly along the corridor.
A few moments later she slipped out of bed and carried Dan"s tray to his room, but she did not go in with it. Her instinct told her that he would rather she did not just then; so, laying it on the floor, she tapped lightly at his door, told him what was there, and crept back to bed again.
"What a day it has been," she thought to herself as she nestled down under the cool sheet. "Yet it began like all the others. I wonder how all will end. Perhaps it won"t be so bad after all. I hope that Betty"s letter won"t do more harm than good. I shouldn"t be at all surprised, though, if it made Aunt Pike make up her mind to come. But I"ll try not to think about it," and turning over on her pillow, Kitty had soon forgotten Aunt Pike, Anna, torn braid, orange cake, and Lady Kitson, and was once again driving dear old Prue across the moor with the storm beating and roaring about them, only this time it was a dreamland moor and a dreamland storm.
CHAPTER V.
IN WENMERE WOODS.
"I could not think, for the moment," said Kitty, sitting up in bed and clasping her knees, "why I woke with a feeling that something dreadful had happened. Of course it is Aunt Pike that is on my mind.
"She needn"t be, then," said Betty, stretching herself luxuriously in her little bed. "My letter will settle all that worry."
"Um!" remarked Kitty thoughtfully, with none of the confidence shown by her young sister. "If your letter doesn"t make her come by the very first train, it will only be because she missed it. I shouldn"t be at all surprised to see her walk in, and Anna too."
"You don"t _really_ think she will?" Betty, struck by something in Kitty"s voice, had stopped stretching herself, and looked across at her sister. "Kitty, you don"t really mean that? Oh no, of course you don"t; she couldn"t really come to-day, she would have lots to do first--packing and saying "good-byes.""
"I should think she hadn"t a friend to say "good-bye" to," said Kitty naughtily. "Any way, I am not going to worry about her. If she doesn"t come--oh, it"ll be perfectly lovely; and if she does--well, we will get all the fun we can beforehand, and after, too, of course; but we will try and have some jolly times first, won"t we? What shall we do to-day?
I wonder if Dan has planned anything."
What Dan"s plan might be was really the important point, for according to him the others, as a rule, shaped their day.