ther had told her she would be expected, and this was what
her cousins thought about her!

Was it not a dreadful state of affairs for a small girl at the beginning
of her first visit? Katie shut her mouth tight, and clenched her small,
hot hands, in a desperate effort to look just ordinary. It was very hard
to be brave. She would have liked to run away, but she knew that would
be cowardly. Her cheeks kept growing hotter and hotter. It was mean, she
had always heard, to listen to things that were not intended for one.
Plainly, there was only one course: to go right on, and not let anybody
know that she had overheard those dreadful, unkind words.

The waiting and the silence was almost too much. The girls' voices died
away in the room; a bee was buzzing in a foxglove bell at her elbow, and
some cows went quietly up the lane past the green garden-gate. Then, all
at once, the door flew open, and tall Janet and fair-haired Clare stood
before her.

'You dear child, have you come all alone? How tired she looks, Clare!'

'Katie, Katie, haven't you got a kiss for your own Clare?'

There was quite a chorus of greetings as they ushered puzzled Katie into
a bright room where her invalid aunt, wrapped in a shawl, and rather
pale, lay on a couch, holding out both hands to welcome the visitor.

'Oh, dear,' thought Katie, 'I don't know how they can _pretend_ to be so
kind!'

She stood there in the midst of them all, awkward and silent, an
honest-hearted little girl, obliged to act a most untruthful part. Try
as she might, her kisses were but cold ones. She would have liked to
push them away, and to cry out: 'You don't love me, really; you said I
was a noisy creature! Let me go home.'

It was worse when her kind, suffering aunt took her in her arms, and
said she was 'Oh! so glad to have her to stay!' Katie felt such a mean,
horrid little girl. She did not know which way to look or where to hide
her hot cheeks.

In the middle of the window, a large green parrot was clawing at her
perch.

'This is Polly,' said Janet, passing a hand under the great creature's
wing. 'The people next door are going away, and they have sent her to us
till they come back.'

Here Polly interrupted with a long, loud screech, so that everybody had
to put their hands to their ears.

'We rather like her,' said Clare, when she had finished, 'but oh! she is
so noisy! Come and stroke her, Katie!'

So that was the 'noisy creature!' Katie's troubles all