“Whatever you do, my dear girl,” said Aunt Gloriana, “don’t come to me. I’m as poor as a church mouse, if not poorer. I have been obliged to ask Mrs. Pirie to give me a smaller bedroom, for I really cannot pay more than a pound a week for my lodgings and bit of food, and I must say she’s been rather nasty about it, sticking me in an attic at the top of the house, where I just perish with the cold. I wonder, Kit, if you could spare me ten shillings to buy a little shawl and an indiarubber bottle to keep my poor feet warm at night? I can’t afford a fire in my bedroom—sixpence a scuttle, outrageous! Try and send me ten shillings, like a good child. You must have got lots of lovely Christmas boxes. But, whatever you do, Kitty, don’t come here, for there literally isn’t a corner for you. I’m glad you’re happy. Make the best of your time at school and with your fine friends, and for the Lord’s sake get that prize you told me about, for it would be the making of you.”
Now this most uncheerful letter caused Kitty to make up her mind. She was desperate. She could not go to Aunt Gloriana; she could not remain where she was, and through her own folly she had lost her entrée to the Dodds’.
The different young people, all happy, merry, and thoughtless, who were arranging how they would spend their day at Preston Manor, little knew what anxiety was weighing down the heart of the prettiest, and apparently the brightest, of that group. There was Kitty, with her cheeks flushed, partly from health, it is true, but a good deal also from excitement, wearing her charming blue velvet frock with its deep real lace collar, her raven-black hair in two great plaits hanging down below her waist, and tied with blue ribbon to match the colour of her frock, her lovely little feet encased in priceless shoes and clothed in lovely silk stockings. No girl could look more refined and more beautiful, and yet this girl was, at the present moment, practically homeless. She could not return to The Red Gables, for Mrs. Fleming had decided, after all, to take a fortnight’s holiday before the school reopened, and the entire house would be shut up. This news was related in Kitty’s hearing by one of the Wyndhams, who had heard it from their governess. Had Mrs. Fleming been at home, Kitty, as a last resource, would have gone back to her; not that she would have liked it—under existing circumstances, indeed, she would have loathed it—but any port in a storm.
Now it so happened that Kitty had made a great deal of Aunt Gloriana. She had always allowed the girls of the school to imagine that she was extremely well-off; the only girls who had really the least idea of her poverty were the two Dodds; the other girls supposed that Kitty was rich of the rich, and her dresses certainly pointed to that fact. Then Aunt Gloriana lived in a private hotel at Folkestone, where she had every possible luxury and was surrounded by adoring friends. It had been, on the whole, something of a deprivation to Kitty to give up going to auntie for Christmas; auntie and her friends were really pining for her; but, of course, she could not refuse the dear, dear Wyndhams when they asked her; for the sake of the dear, dearest Wyndhams she would go to them for a little; but darling auntie, she would postpone some of the gaieties until Kitty arrived. Having made up that story with regard to the stately way in which Miss Merrydew resided, Kitty could not, therefore, make a poor mouth about her, nor could she explain to her friend Jessie that she really would be glad to have a room in one of the attics at Preston Manor rather than leave that luxurious house. Molly and Jessie both came up to Kitty after breakfast.
“We are so sorry you have to leave on New Year’s Eve,” they said, “but, of course, you will enjoy it, won’t you? Your aunt will be glad to have you for a short time. She’ll have you for nearly a fortnight, won’t she?”
“Yes—that is, if I go to her.”
“Oh but you wouldn’t disappoint her when she’s so anxious to have you.”
“No, of course not. I was thinking of going to see the Dodds this morning. I suppose it isn’t possible for me to have any sort of a trap to drive there? I can walk, but——”
“Indeed you sha’n’t walk,” said Molly; “you can have the pony trap. If you want to go alone, you can have it at once. Will you be staying there long?”
“No, I think I shall be back to lunch. I don’t want to lose the time with you.”