Part 34 (1/2)

As she left the doctor, walking away with heavy, tired steps, he looked after her, half pitying, half admiring.

”She has had some hard knocks to-day, poor child,” he said to himself, ”but she has plenty of sense and plenty of pluck. At any rate I hope so, for she will need both, I fancy, in the time that lies before her.”

Kitty, making her way slowly up the stairs to Betty's room and her own, was again impressed with that curious sensation of being some one else, of seeing everything for the first time. How strangely things came about, she thought. Here she was, back in her home again, as she had so often longed to be, but oh how different it was from what she had pictured--no joy in coming, no one to meet her, a stranger to welcome her, the house silent and strange. Could it be really she, Kitty Trenire, walking alone up the old, wide, familiar staircase as though she had never gone away or known that brief spell of school life?

Could she really be come back to her own again, as mistress of her father's house? It seemed so--for a time, at any rate. Kitty felt very serious, and full of awe at the thought, and as she slowly mounted the dear old stairs a little very eager, if unspoken, prayer went up from her heavy heart.

Then she reached the door of her room and Betty's, and knocked.

”Who is there?” demanded Betty's voice. ”Me. Kitty.”

”Kitty What, Kitty! Oh--h--h!” There was a rush across the room, then a pause. ”I--I don't think you had better come in,” gasped Betty.

”You'll never want to see me again if you do.”

”Don't be silly. Why, Betty, whatever has happened?” cried Kitty, as she opened the door and stepped into an almost perfectly dark room.

”Are you ill?”

”No,” miserably, ”I wish I was, then p'r'aps you'd be sorry; and if I was to die you might forgive me, but you can't unless I do die.”

”O Betty, what _have_ you done?” cried Kitty, growing quite alarmed.

”Is she--is she dead?” asked Betty in an awful whisper.

”Who? Poor Aunt Pike? No; Dr. Yearsley told me she is just ever so slightly better.”

”Oh!” gasped Betty, a world of relief in her sigh, ”I _am_ so glad.

Then I ain't a--a murderess--at least not yet. I've been afraid to ask, and n.o.body came to tell me, and I--O Kitty, it was I made her tumble down like that in a fit or something, and I was _so_ frightened.

I will never tell any one anything any more.”

”You will tell me what it was that you told Aunt Pike that upset her so?”

”I don't think I can,” said Betty. ”You will hate me so, and so will father--that is why I wanted to hide for ever from all of you; but,”

with sudden indignation, ”that silly old 'Rover' brought me back. Oh, it was dreadful!”

”What was?” asked Kitty patiently. She knew Betty's roundabout way of telling a story, and waited. ”What did you tell Aunt Pike? Do tell me, Betty dear. I ought to know before I see her.”

Betty dropped on to the window-seat and covered her face with her hands.

”Don't look at me; I don't want to see you look mad with me. It was Aunt Pike's fault first of all. If she hadn't said nasty--oh, horrid things about you, I shouldn't have told her what I did, but--but she made me, Kitty; I couldn't help it, and--and I told her right out that Anna could have cleared you long ago, and that she and Lettice were mean and dishonourable to let you bear the blame for them all this time.

And when she spoke after that, her voice sounded so--oh, so dreadful, as if she was talking in her sleep, or was far away, or drowning, and she looked--oh, her face frightened me, and then she said, 'Did--Anna-- know?' all slow and gaspy like that, as if she hadn't any breath, and I said 'Yes'--I _had_ to say 'yes' then, hadn't I? Of course I didn't know it would make her ill, but she fell right down, all of a heap, and oh, I nearly died of fright, and I ran and ran all the way to Wenmere Woods, and I meant never to come back again--never! And it was all Mrs.

Henderson's fault that I did come--at least Mrs. Henderson's and b.u.mble's, and,” drawing herself up with great dignity, ”I am never going to speak to either of them again. When I had had my tea--she gave me cream and jam, but not any ham--and when I had played about for a little while, she told me she thought I had better be going home, as I was alone; and at last I had to tell her I was never going home any more, and I would be her little servant, if she would take me, only no one must ever see me, or I should be discovered, but she wasn't a bit nice as she generally is. She said, 'Oh, nonsense; little girls mustn't talk like that. I am going to Gorlay to chapel, and I will take you back with me.'

”Then I knew it wasn't any good to ask her to help me, and that I must sleep in the wood with all the wild beasts and things”--Betty's face and her story grew more and more melodramatic--”and as soon as she had gone to put on her bonnet, I ran into the woods for my life. I expect when she came down again and didn't see me she thought I had gone home.

I don't think anybody went to look for me, and I think it was very unkind of them, for I might have been eaten up, for all they knew, by wild beasts--”

”Oh no,” said Kitty, rousing for the first time from the shock and distress Betty's revelations had thrown her into. ”There is nothing in the woods more savage than rabbits and squirrels.”

Betty looked hurt. ”Oh yes, there is,” she protested, ”or I shouldn't have gone up and kept close to the railway lines. I saw something, quite large, staring at me with great savage eyes, and if it wasn't a wolf, I am sure it was a badger or--or a wild-cat.”

”Did it fly at you?”