Kitty Trenire Part 19

Tony sat looking at his poor little legs disgustedly, but it was the ugliness of his new footgear that struck him most; he did not feel the torment as his sisters did. Then quite suddenly Betty stripped off the detestable things.

"Thank you," she said, "I'll wear my old ones. I prefer the cold."

Mrs. Pike coloured with annoyance and set her lips firmly. "How dare you defy me in that way, Elizabeth!" she cried. "I have told you to wear those stockings, and you _are_ to wear them. Remember, I mean what I say. I wonder your father has not insisted long before this on your wearing flannel next your skin. Don't you know that by going about in flimsy cotton things in all weathers you are laying up for yourself a rheumatic old age, and all kinds of serious illness?"

Kitty shuddered, but not at the prospect drawn for her by her aunt.

"Father knows that we can't," she said seriously, "so he never tried to make us."

Betty, who had been absorbed in thought, looked up eagerly. "I would much rather have rheumatism than itchy stockings," she protested quite gravely. "I don't mind a bit, Aunt Pike. And--well, you see we can't be sure that we shall have an old age, or rheumatics."

Mrs. Pike grew really angry. "Put on those stockings at once, miss, and fasten them to your suspenders.--Kitty, fasten yours too."

"Oh, please let me wait," cried Kitty, "before I pull them tight; it is so awful."

"Nonsense! It is more than half of it fancy. Remember you are to wear them until the warm weather comes," and with that Aunt Pike walked away triumphant.

"Oh, how hideous they are!" groaned Kitty, as she looked disgustedly at her striped legs; "how perfectly hideous! I shall be ashamed to go out in them. What will Dan say when he sees them?"

"It is worse for me," wailed Betty, "my dress is so short. O Kitty, how can we ever walk in these dreadful things?"

"I don't know," said Kitty bitterly, "but we've _got_ to. It is a good thing we have something nice to do to-day, for it may help us to forget." But nothing made them do that; the discomfort went with them everywhere, and destroyed their pleasure in everything.

Earlier in the day Dr. Trenire had said that they might all go to the station to meet Dan; and they went on top of the 'bus, and alone too, for Anna did not break up until the next day, and the weather was lovely, and everything might have been perfect, if only they could have forgotten their tortured legs. But to do that was more than they were capable of, for, in addition to the torture of them, there was the consciousness of their extraordinary ugliness, an ugliness which caught every eye.

"What on earth have you all got yourselves up in?" was almost Dan's first greeting. "I say, you aren't going to do it often, are you?"

And Betty straightway explained with much vehemence and feeling the torment of mind and body to which they had been condemned.

"They look like Aunt Pike," said Dan. "No one else could have unearthed such things. There is one comfort--we shall always be able to see you coming when you have them on. Now then, mount, or we shan't get outside seats."

But when Kitty, more than ever conscious after Dan's comments, looked at the steps and the little crowd of people who would witness her ascent, and thought of her dreadful stockings, her heart failed her.

"I--I think I will go inside," she said hastily.

"So will I," said Betty, shamefaced too.

"Nonsense," cried Dan, guessing at once what was the matter. "You two skip up first, and I'll follow close to hide your le--retreat, I mean.

I am not going to be done out of our drive home together. Now then, courage--up you get!"

And up they did get, but it did require courage: and the getting down was even worse--their cheeks blazed and their hearts grew hot with anger, and oh! the irritation of their poor unhappy legs.

"Kitty," whispered Betty eagerly, as they hurried into the house, "come upstairs, quick; I've thought of something. It's a splendid idea!"

With the excuse that they were going to take off their hats and coats, they rushed up to their bedroom and shut themselves in. Aunt Pike was a little surprised at their neatness; Dan was a little hurt at being left so soon, but Betty could not think of that then.

"Kitty," she breathed, as she closed the door and leaned against it, "I know what we will do. We will wear our cotton stockings underneath these horrors! They won't scratch us then, will they? And our holidays won't be spoilt, and Aunt Pike won't know, and--don't you think it's a perfectly splendid idea?"

"Splendid," cried Kitty enthusiastically, dropping on to the floor and beginning to unlace her boots that very moment. "Oh, quickly let us make haste and change them; I cannot, cannot endure this torment a minute longer. O Betty, why didn't you think of it sooner?"

Then, holding up one of the offending gray stockings between the tips of her fingers, "Did you--did any one ever see anything in all this world so hideous?"

"We can do away with their itchiness, but we shall never, never be able to hide their ugliness," said Betty ruefully. "_Nothing_ could do that."

But the ugliness did not seem to matter so much when the irritation was stopped; and they had such a grand time that evening, there was so much to tell, and hear, and do, and show, that all other things were forgotten, at least for the time.

And how lovely it was to wake in the morning and remember at once that the holidays had come, and Dan was home; and then to wander about the house and garden with him, looking up old haunts, and visiting Prue and Billy and Jabez in the stables; for Aunt Pike had allowed them that much licence on this the first day of the holidays. Then after dinner they all went up to Dan's room to help him to unpack, and there was no end of running backwards and forwards, looking at new treasures and old ones, and talking incessantly until the afternoon had nearly worn away without their realizing it.

"Um!" said Dan at last, pausing on the landing to hang over the banisters and sniff audibly. "A--ha! methinks I smell the soul-inspiring smell of saffron! For thirteen long, weary weeks I have not smelt that glorious smell. Oh yes, I have though, once. There was a saffron cake in the hamper. f.a.n.n.y's own, too. Why," with sudden recollection, "I haven't had a good talk with f.a.n.n.y yet. Aunt Pike was about all the time, and dried up the words in my throat. I'm going down to see her this very moment as ever is." And that moment he went.

The other three followed swiftly but silently, for Anna was at home and in her bedroom, resting, preparatory to going to a party that evening-- the break-up party at Hillside--at least she was supposed to be resting.

Her sharp ears, though, were ever on the alert, and if she guessed what was going on, she would come out and spoil everything. Mrs. Pike was shopping--buying gloves, and elastic for Anna's shoes, and a few trifles for herself, for she too was going to the party.

The kitchen was very snug and warm and full of business, as well as savoury odours, when they reached it. f.a.n.n.y had a large Christmas cake out cooling on the table, and mince pies and tartlets all ready to go into the oven, while on a clean white cloth at one end of the table were laid half a dozen large saffron cakes and a lot of saffron nubbies to cool.

"O f.a.n.n.y, how I adore you!" cried Dan, hugging her warmly. "No one in the world reads my thoughts as you do. The one thing I wanted at this moment was a nubby, and here it is." And seizing a couple he began to eat them with a rapidity that was positively alarming. "I know, though you don't say much, that you are overjoyed to see me home again; I can see it in your eyes. The house is a different place when I am home, isn't it?"

"It is _different_ certainly," said f.a.n.n.y with emphasis and a sniff, but not quite the emphasis Dan had asked for. Her coolness did not put him out, though. f.a.n.n.y had a soft spot in her heart for him, and he knew it, the scamp; but though Dan was perhaps her favourite, at any rate for the moment, the others benefited by the favour shown to him.

"I knew you would feel it," he said sympathetically; "I was afraid it would tell on you. How thin you have gone, f.a.n.n.y," with an anxious glance at f.a.n.n.y's plump cheeks.

"Get along with your iteming. Master Dan," she said severely.

"I should have thought they'd have learnt you better at school; and if anybody'd asked me, I should have said that the kitchen wasn't the place for young gentlemen."

"But n.o.body has asked you," said Dan. "And how," melodramatically, "could you expect me to keep away when you are here, and I smelt new saffron cake?"

"And how do you expect me to do all I've a-got to do with the lot of you thronging up every inch of my kitchen?" she went on, ignoring his flattery.

"Ask me another," said Dan, handing nubbies the while to all the others.

"I give that one up. But I knew you would be frightfully cut up if I didn't come."

f.a.n.n.y snorted in a most contemptuous manner, and tossed her head with great scorn. "Oh! I'd have managed to survive it, I dare say, and I don't suppose I should break down if you was to go."

"Do you know, f.a.n.n.y dear," said Dan, suddenly growing very serious, "when I went away I never expected to see you still in this dear old kitchen when I came home, and the thought nearly broke my heart; it did really. I didn't think you could have stood--you know who, so long."

"Well, I reckon you won't see me here next time you comes home," said f.a.n.n.y, trying hard not to look pleasant; "and as for this 'dear old kitchen,' as you call it--dear old barn, I call it, with its draughts and its old rough floor--it isn't never no credit to me, do what I will to it, and Mrs. Pike is always going on at me about the place. I says sometimes I'll give up and let it go, and then some folks'll see the difference."

Kitty remembered the time when f.a.n.n.y, not so many months back, had let it go, and she had seen the difference. But she said nothing, and munched contentedly at her nubby; and f.a.n.n.y, who really loved her big, homelike old kitchen almost as well as she did the children, continued to talk.

"I wish Jabez would come in," said Dan. "He used to love hot cake, and I have hardly had a chance to say anything to him since I came."

"n.o.body gets a chance to nowadays," said f.a.n.n.y sharply. "He gets his head took off--not by me--if he so much as sets foot inside these doors; and Jabez isn't partial to having his head took off."

"I should think his foot should be taken off, not his head," giggled Betty; but no one but herself laughed at her joke.

Kitty, who had been sitting on the corner of the table which stood in the window, munching her nubby and thinking very busily, suddenly looked up, her face alight with eagerness.

"f.a.n.n.y," she cried, "don't you want to do something very, very nice and kind and--and lovely, something that would make us all love you more than ever?"

f.a.n.n.y glanced up quickly; but as she was always suspicious that some joke was being played on her, she, as usual, made a cautious answer.

She was not going to be drawn into anything until she knew more. "Well, I dunno as I wants to do more than I'm doing--letting 'ee eat my cake so fast as I bakes it."