Kitty listened with wide, grave eyes; her heart was heavy and anxious, her mind full of awe and care. How terribly serious life had become all at once; how real and possible every dreadful thing seemed, when so many came into one's life like this.
As she left the doctor, walking away with heavy, tired steps, he looked after her, half pitying, half admiring.
"She has had some hard knocks to-day, poor child," he said to himself, "but she has plenty of sense and plenty of pluck. At any rate I hope so, for she will need both, I fancy, in the time that lies before her."
Kitty, making her way slowly up the stairs to Betty's room and her own, was again impressed with that curious sensation of being some one else, of seeing everything for the first time. How strangely things came about, she thought. Here she was, back in her home again, as she had so often longed to be, but oh how different it was from what she had pictured—no joy in coming, no one to meet her, a stranger to welcome her, the house silent and strange. Could it be really she, Kitty Trenire, walking alone up the old, wide, familiar staircase as though she had never gone away or known that brief spell of school life? Could she really be come back to her own again, as mistress of her father's house? It seemed so—for a time, at any rate. Kitty felt very serious, and full of awe at the thought, and as she slowly mounted the dear old stairs a little very eager, if unspoken, prayer went up from her heavy heart.
Then she reached the door of her room and Betty's, and knocked.
"Who is there?" demanded Betty's voice. "Me. Kitty."
"Kitty What, Kitty! Oh—h—h!" There was a rush across the room, then a pause. "I—I don't think you had better come in," gasped Betty. "You'll never want to see me again if you do."
"Don't be silly. Why, Betty, whatever has happened?" cried Kitty, as she opened the door and stepped into an almost perfectly dark room. "Are you ill?"
"No," miserably, "I wish I was, then p'r'aps you'd be sorry; and if I was to die you might forgive me, but you can't unless I do die."
"O Betty, what have you done?" cried Kitty, growing quite alarmed.