icken with home-sickness than another, that poor little mortal was
Kitty. She loved every inch of the house and garden, of Gorlay, and of
her county, and every person and animal who made up her home and her
home life--loved all, too, with such an intensity that she felt it would
be utterly impossible to live day after day away from them.

It was a relief to her to hear that the school she was to go to was no
farther off than Plymouth, but beyond that she took no interest in it,
for the school was of Mrs. Pike's selecting, and wicked Kitty detested
it before she even knew anything about it, and made up her mind to go on
detesting it, no matter what it turned out to be. To her it was simply
a prison, and she could not and would not try to love her jailers.
She felt, too, a conviction that her aunt would have told Miss Pidsley,
the headmistress, all the story of the suspicion which had rested on
her, and told it from her own point of view, of course.

There was one good outcome of the resentment Kitty bore her aunt for
"getting her sent away," as she put it--it made her determine not to let
Mrs. Pike see how much she felt it, and so helped her to bear up
bravely. Helped her, that is, to bear up by day, but oh the nights!
Oh, those long, miserable nights of heart-break and homesickness, when
the pain was so intense as almost to drive her to appeal on her knees to
Aunt Pike to let her stay at home, to promise abjectly to be and do all
that she could wish. And there were those other terrible moments, too,
when misery nearly drove her to tell the truth about Anna and Lettice.

Those were, perhaps, the hardest impulses of all to fight, for she knew
that but to speak would mean, probably, that she would be considered fit
to remain in her home, and Anna it would be who would be sent away.

All her life after Kitty was thankful that she had had the strength
given her to resist this temptation, but it was a very real one at the
time. There was to be no delay in sending her away. She was to go at
the end of the Christmas holidays, and active preparations for her
outfit began at once. To Betty this was most enthralling, and largely
made up for the painful part, but Kitty took no interest in it whatever.
Not even the fact of having a new Inverness and umbrella, and four new
dresses all at once, not to speak of gloves, and hats, and shoes, and a
number of other things, could rouse her to any sense of pleasure.

She was very s