n, apparently overcome with
terror, though with her ears very much on the alert for any sounds which
might reach them. Perhaps she shrank from the sight that might meet
her eyes when the door was opened.

Mrs. Pike, far more agitated than her daughter, without waiting to hear
any more, rushed along the corridor and up the stairs to the upper
landing where all the children's rooms were, and flinging herself on
Kitty's door, had burst it open before either Betty or Kitty could
realize what was happening. Betty, seriously frightened, sprang up in
her bed with a shriek. Kitty dropped her book hurriedly and sprang out
on the floor.

"What is the matter?" she cried, filled with an awful fear. "Who is
ill? Father? Tony?" But at the violent change in her aunt's
expression from alarm to anger her words died on her lips.

"How dare you! How dare you! You wicked, disobedient, daring girl,
setting the place on fire and risking our lives, and wasting candles,
and--and you know I do not allow reading in bed."

"I wasn't reading," stammered Kitty--"I mean, not stories. I was only
learning my lessons. I _must_ learn them somehow, and I can't--I really
can't--learn them downstairs, Aunt Pike, with Anna whistling and hissing
all the time; it is no use. I have tried and tried, and I _must_ know
them. I wasn't setting the place on fire; it is quite safe. I had
stood the candle-stick in a basin. I always do."

"Always do! Do you mean to say that you are in the habit of reading in
bed?"

"Yes," said Kitty honestly, "we always have. Father does too."

"Even after you knew I did not allow it?" cried Aunt Pike, ignoring
Kitty's reference to her father.

"I didn't know you didn't allow it," said Kitty doggedly. "I had never
heard you say anything about it; and as father did it, I didn't think
there was any harm."

"No harm! no harm to frighten poor Anna so that she flew from her bed
and came rushing through the dark house to me quite white and trembling.
She was afraid your room was on fire, and was dreadfully frightened of
course. She will probably feel the ill effects of the shock for some
time."

Betty, having got over her fright, had been sitting up in bed all this
time embracing her knees. When Anna's name was mentioned her eyes began
to sparkle. "If Anna had come in here first to see, she needn't have
trembled or been frightened," she remarked shrewdly.

"Anna naturally ran to her mother," said Mrs. Pike