“But how are you to get back from Downton?” inquired Molly, “for I’m ever so sorry, but all our carriages will be out this afternoon. Mother has to pay calls, and she wants us both to go with her, and the motor-car and the omnibus are going to the train to meet our cousins, the Franklins and the Arbuthnots.”
Kitty did not know anything about these arrivals.
Anne now came to her aid. “I can have the use of the car for the greater part of the day,” she said, “so I can drive you back from Downton to the lodge-gates, after you have made your purchases, Kitty.”
“How kind of you, Miss Dodd!” said Mrs. Wyndham, in her stately tones. “Yes, that would be a real help. I am very much obliged.” She spoke cordially to the girl, who, plain as she was, rather took her fancy.
Thus it came to pass that Kitty and Anne found themselves alone.
“Kitty, you are clever!” exclaimed Anne, as the smooth-rolling car took them quickly over the king’s highway. “I was puzzling my brains to know how I could possibly manage to be alone with you; of course, I came over for no other purpose. Even I know that it was a little forward, a little pushing of me to call at the Wyndhams’ to-day; but there was no help for it. I had to see you, and alone. Oh Kitty, you are clever! I believe if any one in the world can get us all out of this scrape, you are the girl.”
Kitty gave a profound sigh. “Sometimes,” she said—a queer, unexpected look of pathos visiting her handsome little face—“sometimes,” she continued, “I almost wish I were not so clever. I tell you what it is, Anne, it’s an awful mistake for a poor girl, a poor girl like me, to be in a school with rich girls like most of the rest of you.”
“Oh but a lot of us aren’t rich,” interrupted Anne. “Priscilla, I know, isn’t, and I don’t think Rufa is, and Hannah is poor, and so—so is Sophy.”
“Don’t talk to me about either Hannah or Sophy; they’re a pair of cads, both of them.”
“I don’t think so,” faltered Anne; “I think, on the contrary, they’re very courageous.”