I have no real home, only a
guardian, an old man, who doesn't want me any more than I want to go,
and is just as anxious as I am for the holidays to be over. He is old,
and an invalid too, poor old man, and he never will have any one to stay
in the house, or allow me to; so it is dull, and one doesn't feel very
overjoyed at going home to it. I can assure you I find it much more
exciting to come back to school. I suppose you have brothers and
sisters and a real home?" looking across at Kitty with wistful eyes.

"Oh yes!" said Kitty, and then she fell to talking of them; and Miss
Hammond and Pamela listened with such interest and laughter to her
account of their escapades and adventures, that Kitty talked on and on,
until at last they were interrupted by a cab drawing up before the
house, and Miss Hammond had to go to welcome the new arrivals.

"I feel as though I knew Betty and Dan and Tony already," said Pamela as
they strolled down the corridor to their rooms. "I wish I did. And
your father must be a perfect dear, I think."

"He is," said Kitty warmly, but with a catch in her voice; and from that
moment she loved Pamela. "I do wish," she said impulsively, "I do wish
you could come and stay with us, and know them all. There isn't very
much to see at Gorlay, but there are beautiful places all round it, and
we could have some jolly times."

"I'd love to come," said Pamela heartily. "I know I should enjoy myself
tremendously, I feel it in my bones. But don't ask me if you don't
really mean it, for I shall come, I tell you plainly."

Kitty laughed, actually laughed quite gaily, and made up her mind that
it should not be her fault if Pamela did not have at least one happy
holiday.

The next day the girls were allowed to write home to announce their safe
arrival. Kitty wrote to her father a letter full of eagerness and
promises, and longings for the holidays, which made Dr. Trenire smile
and sigh as he laid it away in his pocket-book, and made the house seem
emptier and less itself even than it had done before. In with her
father's letter Kitty put one for Betty. It was the first that young
person had ever received, and it so filled her with a sense of
importance that Anna and Tony said she was almost unbearable all the
rest of the day. How many times she read it over no one could have
counted, but at every opportune and inopportune moment it was drawn out
of her pocket, until at last it grew quite frayed