Then came the inevitable tussle with the cabman as to the fare, during which Kitty glanced about her at the people on the platform, picking out with special interest those boys and girls who looked as though they also were going to school, and expending on them a great amount of pity which was probably in some cases quite wasted.
At last came the summons to "get in," and Kitty got into the musty old cab beside her aunt, and they were started on the last stage of their journey through rain-washed busy streets, where the people were hurrying along under umbrellas, or in omnibuses and cabs. Now and then a cab laden with luggage would lumber past them on its way to the station, and Kitty's mind would follow the people inside it through a whole long chapter of imaginary happenings until something else passed and distracted her thoughts.
By-and-by they left the streets, and came to a quiet suburb, where road after road, lined on either side with houses exactly like each other, stretched in depressing monotony. To Kitty it looked the very acme of correct, neat, yet hateful propriety, and her thoughts flew back longingly to the dear old irregular wind-swept street of Gorlay, which was to her then the most lovable and lovely spot on the face of the earth. At last, when she was almost tired of speculating on the people who lived in the houses they were passing, and of pitying them for being condemned to such a fate, the jolting cab drew up before a corner house, one of the primmest of all the houses in the dullest of all the roads they had passed that afternoon, and Kitty saw a shining brass plate on the rails at the foot of the tiny patch of trim garden, and on the brass plate "Miss Pidsley."
That was all. And this was the place that was to be her home! It was quite a small school to which she had been banished—a small private one where a few girls "who needed particular attention and training received the individual care they needed," as Aunt Pike carefully read out from the prospectus, dealing poor Kitty thus the last and most crushing insult.
If the outside of the house had been unlike home and Gorlay, the inside was even more so; the extreme neatness, the absolute spotlessness of everything, the bareness, the high, square, ugly rooms, each and all weighed on Kitty's spirits with a fresh load of depression. At the thought of being left there for months together with not a face about her that she knew, or a person who cared for her, she felt positively sick with misery. She even dreaded the moment when Aunt Pike should depart. But the moment soon came, and with a peck at Kitty's cheek, and a last request that she would make the most of the excellent opportunities for improvement now opening out before her, and a desire that she would try to be a good girl. Aunt Pike left her, and Kitty gazed after her with eyes aching with the tears she would not shed. She pictured her journeying home to Gorlay, saw her driving up through the street, drawing up before the old house, the door opening and the light streaming out, and Betty and Tony—and then the tears came, whether she would or no, and drowned every thought and sight and sound but that of her own misery.
No. 127 Laburnum Road was under the joint partnership of two ladies, Miss Pidsley and Miss Hammond. Miss Pidsley was the chief partner, and took the lead. She interviewed the parents, managed the house, the meals, and almost everything, while Miss Hammond's duties lay more especially with the girls, their lessons and games.
Before ever Kitty went to the school she had decided that she could not like Miss Pidsley. She declared that she knew exactly what she would be like. She would be cold, and stern, and hateful, or Aunt Pike would not have taken to her; and when Miss Pidsley came into the room to receive them, she knew that to some extent she was right. Her new mistress welcomed them—at least she shook hands with them—and she smiled—at least she half closed her eyes in a weary fashion, and widened her lips, but there was no heartiness or gladness in it. But while Kitty felt the chilliness of it, she could not help sympathizing with Miss Pidsley. To her it would have been wonderful if any one had been able to smile in such a house as that.
Presently tea was brought in, and for nearly half an hour Kitty sat holding tea and bread and butter, trying her best to swallow both, but vainly. Miss Hammond did not appear at tea. She had only just arrived, Miss Pidsley explained, and was tired. The other pupils had not yet come; there were only four of them, and they travelled by later trains from higher up the line.
After tea, Kitty, who was to have a room to herself that term as there was no room-mate for her, was shown her little bare bedroom, and there Aunt Pike said her farewells, and left her alone amidst her boxes; and there she remained crying and crying her heart out, her boxes untouched, everything forgotten but her own overpowering misery. "She could not bear it," she moaned, "she could not bear it!" She thought of her father, and Tony, and Betty, and felt sure her heart must break.
"Poor child! We all have to bear it, dear, once in our lives, and some of us many times," said a soft voice very quietly, while a soft hand was laid on her bowed head.