Kitty Trenire

by Mabel Quiller-Couch

BETTY'S ESCAPADE.

June had come, a brilliantly fine June, and overpoweringly hot. Wind-swept, treeless Gorlay lay shadeless and panting under the blazing sun, and the dwellers there determined that they preferred the cutting winds and driving rains to which they were better accustomed.

Dr. Trenire had gone, and Betty and Tony had been inconsolable. The "locum," Dr. Yearsley, had come, and Jabez had long since announced that he had no great opinion of him, coming as he did from one of the northern counties.

"I don't say but what he may be a nice enough gentleman," he said; "but coming from so far up along it stands to reason he can't know nothing of we or our ailments. I s'pose the master had his reasons for choosing him, but it do seem a pity."

Aunt Pike did not approve of the newcomer, but for another reason. "He was so foolish about the children," she complained. "It is very nice to say you are fond of them, but it is perfectly absurd to make so much of them; it only encourages them to be forward and opinionated, and puts them out of their place." And to balance all this Aunt Pike herself became a little more strict than usual, and very cross. It may have been that she felt the heat very trying, and perhaps was not very well, but there was no doubt that she was very irritable and particular at that time—more so than she used to be—and nothing that the children did was, in her eyes, right.

Anna was irritable too, but there was much excuse for her, for having had pneumonia in the winter, and measles in the spring, her mother was determined that she should not have bronchitis, or rheumatism, or pneumonia again in the summer, and through that overpoweringly hot weather poor Anna was condemned to go about clothed in a fashion which might have been agreeable in the Highlands in January, but in Gorlay in the summer was really overwhelming, and kept poor Anna constantly in a state bordering on heat apoplexy, or exhaustion and collapse.

Had Dr. Trenire been at home he would have interfered, and rescued her from her wraps and shawls, heavy serge frock, woollen stockings, and innumerable warm garments; or, perhaps, if Anna had not been so afraid of her mother, but had appealed to her candidly and without fear, she might have obtained relief. This, unfortunately, was not Anna's way, for Anna's ways were still as crooked and shifty as her glances. She would think out this plan and that plan to avoid the only one that was straightforward and right, though it must be said for her that she did try to be more open and honourable—at times she tried quite hard; but since Kitty had gone, and she had been so much with her mother, all her old foolish fears of her had come back with renewed strength, and all her old mean ways and crooked plans for getting her own way and escaping scoldings.

Now, instead of asking to be relieved from some of her burdensome clothing, she made up her mind to destroy the things she detested most, and trust to not being found out; or, if she was found out—well, "the things must have been lost at the laundry." This seemed to her an excellent explanation.

So, one day when her mother was out and Betty and Tony had gone for a drive with Dr. Yearsley, Anna betook herself to the garden with some of her most loathed garments under her arm, and a box of matches in her pocket. A bonfire on a summer's day is easy to ignite, and there was just sufficient breeze to fan the flame to active life, so Anna was in the midst of her work of destruction almost before she realized it. But, while waiting for her mother to depart, Anna had forgotten that the time was hurrying on towards Betty's and Tony's return. In fact, they drove up but a moment or so after she had left the house on her guilty business.

"Miss Anna has gone up the garden," said Fanny in answer to Betty's inquiries; and Betty, following her slowly, was in time to see a blaze leaping up, and a cloud of smoke and sparks. She quickened her steps, for something interesting seemed to be happening. "Surely Anna isn't trying to smoke out that wasps' nest," she thought in sudden alarm. "She will be stung to death if she is," and Betty took to her heels to try to stop her. But when she got past the rows of peas and beans that had hidden Anna, she saw that what her cousin was poking up was not a wasps' nest, but a heap that was blazing on the ground.