For a second Dan seemed unable to believe his ears, then without a word he closed his basket and walked away.  He was more deeply hurt than he had ever been in his life before, and his face showed it.  Kitty and Tony, hesitating in the hall, saw it, and their eyes filled with tears.  “Throw it away, will you?” he said in a choked voice, holding out the unfortunate basket to Kitty.

Kitty, knowing how she would have felt under similar circumstances, took it without looking at him; instinctive delicacy told her not to.  “Father didn’t mean it,” she whispered consolingly.  “You will come down and have some supper when you have changed, won’t you?”

They were not a demonstrative family; in fact, any lavishly expressed sympathy or affection would have embarrassed them; but they understood each other, and most of them possessed in a marked degree the power of expressing both feelings without a word being spoken.

Dan understood Kitty, but it was too soon to be consoled yet.  “No,” he said bitterly, “I have had supper enough, thank you,” and hurried away very fast.

It really did seem as if Kitty was not to reach the Supper-table that night.  Telling Tony to go in and begin his meal, she flew off with the basket, and, heedless of anything but Dan’s request, was just about to fling it away—­fish, basket, and all—­when she paused.  It was a very good basket, and Dan had no other.  Kitty hesitated, then opened it and looked in.  Six fine trout lay at the bottom on a bed of bracken and wet moss, evidently placed so that they could look their best.  The sight of Dan’s little arrangements brought the tears to her eyes.  No, she could not throw away what he had taken so much pride in.

She turned back and went to the kitchen.  “Fanny,” she said, “will you cook these for father’s breakfast?  Dan has caught them for him.”

“And fine and proud he was too,” said Fanny, looking in at Dan’s catch.

“He was, but he isn’t now.  I wish,” with a deep sigh, “we didn’t always do things the wrong way.  I wonder why nothing ever comes quite right with us?” Then she turned away hastily, that Emily, who at that moment came into the kitchen, might not see the tears that would start to her eyes.

When at last Kitty sat down to the meal which she no longer wanted, every one else had left the table.  She was not sorry, for it saved her from having to make a pretence of eating, and left her free to indulge in her own moods.  It gave her time, too, to think over all that had happened, and might yet happen.

Before she went up to bed, though, she got a tray, and collecting on it a tempting meal, carried it to Dan’s room.  She hoped he would let her in, for she badly needed a talk with him, but just as she was about to knock at his door the murmur of voices within arrested her attention.  Whom could Dan have got in there? she wondered in great surprise.  Tony was in bed, and Betty was in her room.  She listened more closely, and nearly dropped the tray in her astonishment, for the voice she heard was her father’s, and she had never before known him go to their rooms to talk to them.