-"

"No," interrupted Betty anxiously, "not what she always gives us; we
will have fried ham and eggs as well, because, you see, it is a kind of
special day."

"Very well, we will if we have money enough. I wonder if Dan will
agree."

"One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight," clanged out the town
clock viciously. Betty sprang up in bed at once. "It is time to get
up, Kitty," she said peremptorily. "We've got to do everything right
to-day, and be very punctual at meals, and very tidy and all that sort
of thing, so that father will see that Aunt Pike isn't wanted. Do you
think he will be vexed when he knows about my writing to her?
P'r'aps she won't tell."

Kitty scoffed at such an idea. "Aunt Pike is sure to tell; but father
is never _very_ angry."

"But he might be," said Betty wisely; "he looked so last night when all
the mud dropped on his plate; but, of course, this is different--there
is nothing very bad about my writing the letter. I did it to save
him trouble."

"Perhaps you had better tell father so," said Kitty dryly.
"Honour bright, though, Betty, I really would tell him, and not let him
first find it out from Aunt Pike."

"Um!" ejaculated Betty thoughtfully, as she collected Kitty's sponge and
bath-towel before departing to the bathroom. But there was nothing very
hearty in her tone.

When she returned, looking very fresh and rosy, and damp about the
curls, she found Kitty sitting on the side of her bed, and still in her
night-gown. Hearing Betty's returning footsteps, she had managed to get
so far before the door was flung open, but that was all.

"Isn't it dreadful," she sighed wearily, "to think that day after day,
year after year, all my life through, I shall have to get up in the
morning and go through all the same bother of dressing, and I--I hate it
so."

"P'r'aps you won't have to," said Betty cheerfully; "p'r'aps you'll be
a bed-lier like Jane Trebilcock, and you won't have to have boots, or
dresses, or hats."

But the prospect did not cheer Kitty very greatly. "I didn't say I
didn't want dresses and things. I do. I want lots of them, but I don't
want the bother of putting them on."

"Well, they wouldn't be much good if you didn't put them on," retorted
practical Betty. "I hate getting up too"--Betty never failed in her
experience of any form of suffering or unpleasantness--"but I try to
make it a little different every day, to help me on. Sometimes I
pretend