Poor Kitty did her best to keep calm, and she and Jabez carried Anna to the carriage, and there, wrapped in all the rugs and shawls they could muster, she lay in Kitty's arms while Jabez drove quickly home.
Their shortest and best way now was the road they had travelled so happily in the morning, so once again Kitty had a dim glimpse of the tors, standing up so lonely and desolate in the black night, lashed by the rain and swept by the wind, but she turned her eyes away, half shuddering. They were nearly home when they met Dan crawling along, hopeless and dead beat. He was soaked to the skin, his feet were galled and raw with walking in wet boots, but, worst of all, his search had been fruitless. Crawling painfully, miserably homewards, with a mind full of the fate that might have overtaken Anna—Anna, who had saved his life—was it any wonder that he broke down and cried when, on hearing wheels, and turning to ask for a lift, he recognized first old Prue, then Jabez and Kitty, and, best of all, Anna, and knew that his search was ended?
CHAPTER XVI.
BANISHED.
Kitty was to be sent away to school. That was what that unlucky day had done for Kitty. The fiat had gone forth, and there was no escape.
Aunt Pike had been very frightened indeed when she was summoned home, and learned all about Anna's Helbarrow Tors experience, and found her seriously ill with pneumonia as a result of it. She was very angry and very indignant, and angry fright, or fright and anger combined, make the worst form of anger as a rule.
"Kitty was responsible, and there could not possibly be any excuse for her leaving the spot without her cousin," declared Mrs. Pike. "Kitty knew that there were many ways amongst which she might get lost, and how lonely it was, and she and Dan should have gone in search of poor Anna, and not have left the place until they had found her or heard for certain where she was. The idea of coming all the way home without her, and with never a thought or a care as to what had become of her! It was almost incredible!"
"I did think. I did care," pleaded Kitty. "Of course I thought she was ahead of us. I never dreamed that she could have lost her way, or of course I shouldn't have come home without looking for her."
"Then you should have dreamed, or have taken the trouble to find out.
In any case, you should not have left the spot without her."
"But we really thought she was ahead of us," repeated Kitty earnestly, "and we hurried on to pick her up."