“Emily shouldn’t have put down dirty things,” said Kitty, loyal to her sister.  “She is always doing it, and she ought to know better.”  Her sympathies were all with Betty.  She may have been “tackless,” as Fanny called it, but however kindly Emily had been told of her carelessness she would have been certain to fly into a rage; and they had put up with so much from her without complaining, that no one could accuse them of being fidgety or captious.

As a matter of fact, Emily, who needed a very firm mistress of whom she would stand in awe, should have been sent away long before.  Kitty could not manage her at all, and as she thought of all they had endured daily at Emily’s hands, she felt almost thankful that soon the management of her would fall to Aunt Pike’s lot.

“Did you say, Miss Kitty, that the master had asked Mrs. Pike to come here to live altogether, to look after us?”

Kitty nodded despairingly.  After all, the managing of Emily seemed but a very trifling advantage to weigh against the Pike invasion and all that would follow on it.  “O Fanny,” she sighed brokenly, “if only—­if only mother were alive!  Nothing has gone right since, nor ever will again; and I feel it is almost all my fault that Aunt Pike has got to come, and—­and—­”

“Now don’t take on like that, Miss Kitty,” said Fanny, sniffing audibly, and not entirely able to throw off a sense of her own guilt in the matter. “’Tisn’t nothing to do with you, I’m sure.  If things ’as to be, they ’as to be, and we’ll manage some’ow.  I’m going to set about getting a nice supper so soon as ever I can.  I think we’m all low with the thunder and the ’eat, and we’ll be better when we’ve had some food.  Now don’t ’ee fret any more, that’s a dear,” and she wiped Kitty’s eyes and then her own on her very soiled apron, but Kitty bore it gladly for the sake of the warm heart that beat beneath the soiled bib.

“Thank you, Fanny; you are a dear,” she said gratefully; “and I will go and light some lights about the house by the time father has done with that patient he has in with him now.”

Kitty had a great idea of making the house bright and cheerful, but in her zeal she forgot the heat of the night.

“Phew! my word!” gasped Dr. Trenire as he came presently to the dining-room.  “Why, children, how can you breathe in this atmosphere?  I have been turning down the gas all the way I’ve come.  But how nice the table is looking, and how good something is smelling.  I want some supper pretty badly; don’t you, little woman?” with a friendly pull at Kitty’s curls.

Kitty was not hungry now, but she was delighted by her father’s appreciation, and she cut the bread very zealously, and passed him everything she thought he could want.  It was not until she had done all that that the silence and the emptiness of the table struck her.  “Why, where is Dan?” she cried.

“And where is Anthony?” asked Anthony’s father.