me to them, as Kitty said afterwards,
as though there had been a death in the family and she had to break the
news to them. But it was an arrival she had to announce, not a
departure, and she announced it abruptly.

"She's come!" she gasped in a whisper more penetrating than a shout; and
her face added, "You poor, poor things, I am sorry for you."

For once Emily's sympathies were with them, and even while staggering
under the blow they had just received, Kitty could not help noticing the
fact.

"What?--not Aunt Pike?--to stay?" gasped Dan.

Emily nodded, a world of meaning in the action. "You'd best go up and
speak to her at once, or she'll be crosser than she is now, if that's
possible. She's as vexed as can be 'cause there wasn't nobody to the
station to meet her, nor nobody here when she come."

"But we didn't know. How could we? And who could have even dreamed of
her coming to-day!" they argued hotly and all at once.

"A tellygram come soon after you'd a-gone," said Emily, with a sniff;
"but there wasn't nobody here to open it. And how was we to know what
was inside of it; we can't see through envelopes, though to hear some
people talk you would think we ought to be able to."

Kitty knew it was her duty to check Emily's rude way of speaking of her
aunt, but a common trouble was uniting them, and she felt she could not
be severe then.

"Doesn't father know yet?" she asked.

"No, miss."

"Poor father! Has Aunt Pike really come to _stay_, Emily?"

"I can't make out for certain, miss; but if she isn't going to stay now,
she is coming later on. I gathered that much from the way she talked.
She said it didn't need a very clever person to see that 'twas high time
somebody was here to look after things, instead of me being with my 'ead
out of win--I mean, you all out racing the country to all hours of the
night, and nothing in the house fit to eat--"

Kitty groaned.

"I've got to go and get the spare-room ready as soon as she comes out of
it," went on Emily. "A pretty time for anybody to have to set to to
sweep and dust."

Kitty, though, could not show any great sympathy there; having to sweep
and dust seemed to her at that moment such trifling troubles. "Where is
she now, Emily?"

"In the spare-room."

"Oh, the dust under the bed!" groaned Kitty. "She is sure to see it; it
blows out to meet you every time you move!"

"Never mind that now," said Dan; "it is pretty dark everywhere. But we