Part 27 (1/2)
Presently tea was brought in, and for nearly half an hour Kitty sat holding tea and bread and b.u.t.ter, trying her best to swallow both, but vainly. Miss Hammond did not appear at tea. She had only just arrived, Miss Pidsley explained, and was tired. The other pupils had not yet come; there were only four of them, and they travelled by later trains from higher up the line.
After tea, Kitty, who was to have a room to herself that term as there was no room-mate for her, was shown her little bare bedroom, and there Aunt Pike said her farewells, and left her alone amidst her boxes; and there she remained crying and crying her heart out, her boxes untouched, everything forgotten but her own overpowering misery. ”She could not bear it,” she moaned, ”she could not bear it!” She thought of her father, and Tony, and Betty, and felt sure her heart must break.
”Poor child! We all have to bear it, dear, once in our lives, and some of us many times,” said a soft voice very quietly, while a soft hand was laid on her bowed head.
Kitty was so startled that she forgot her disfigured face and looked up; and when she had once looked, and her eyes met the kind eyes gazing into hers, she did not mind, for they were misty too with sympathy.
”You remind me so of the day that I first went away to school, Katherine. You are Katherine, aren't you?”
”Yes,” murmured the owner of the name; ”but they always call me Kitty at home, all but Aunt Pike.”
”May I call you Kitty?”
”Please do,” said Kitty eagerly.
”Well, dear, I want you to unpack your things now, and try to make your room less bare and unhomelike. It will look so different when you have your own pretty things about it, and will seem more your own.”
”I don't want it to,” said Kitty miserably. ”It isn't home, and it never could be; in fact, I don't want it to.”
”Oh, come now, Kitty dear, don't talk like that; call up your courage, and make the best of things. It is only for a time, only for a little time,” said wily Miss Hammond; ”but however short it is, it is always better to try and make it a pleasant time to look back upon. Think of that, Kitty; always when you are hesitating and feel tempted to be disagreeable, or to make things disagreeable, think of the future, and what the present will be like to look back upon.”
Kitty was impressed. She looked up with a brighter, more interested face.
”Have you a mother and father?”
”Mother is dead,” said Kitty softly.
”Poor child,” said Miss Hammond, laying her cool fingers against Kitty's hot cheek. ”For your father's sake then, dear, try to be as brave and cheerful as you can. It is sad enough for him, I am sore, to have this parting, but to know that you are grieving and unhappy will double his sadness. Besides which,” she went on thoughtfully, ”you know he is paying a good deal of money for your education here, and for his sake you should try to get all the good you can from what he is doing for you. Doesn't the thought of working hard for his sake comfort you?”
”Oh yes,” sighed Kitty eagerly, clutching at any kind of comfort, at anything she could do for those she loved. ”Oh yes, it will. I--I hadn't thought of that; but I feel now as if I must work and work--”
then she broke off, embarra.s.sed, and actually laughed at herself.
”There, I knew you had plenty of spirit,” cried Miss Hammond delightedly. ”Now I am going to unpack some of my boxes, and then they are going to bring me some tea to my room. Will you come and join me, dear? I am sure you can manage another tea.”
”Oh yes, thank you,” smiled Kitty, ”I am sure I can. I would love to come.”
Left alone, Kitty began at once to unpack and arrange her belongings.
She felt a little choky as she took out and looked at the photographs and the various little parting gifts that had been given her, particularly when she came across a piece of spar that Tony, without saying a word to any one, must have wrapped up and tucked in amongst her things as a pleasant surprise for her. It was a very pretty bit that he had himself found, and was immensely proud of. Kitty's eyes filled as she held the little cold stone and kissed it. Then she hung up a calendar that Betty had given her, one of her own manufacture. ”I shall soon be able to mark off one day,” she thought with some relief.
Her room grew to look so different and so nice that she became quite interested, and rather a long time had elapsed before she tidied herself and went out in search of Miss Hammond's room. It was not difficult to find, for it was on the same landing as her own, and had Miss Hammond's name painted on the door.
”Come in,” said a voice in answer to her knock. ”Come in. I was just about to begin without you. Sit down here, dear, in this low chair by the table. We will have a 'plate tea' and a drawing-room tea combined;”
and Kitty dropped gladly into a pretty low chair beside the tea-table, which was drawn up to the fire, and Miss Hammond drew up her chair to the other side.
”Oh, what a grand thing tea is! I love it,” she exclaimed with a sigh of pleasure. It was said so girlishly and impulsively that Kitty laughed as she agreed.
”Pamela Peters has come,” said Miss Hammond a moment later, ”and I have asked her to tea too.”
Kitty felt just a little feeling of disappointment. She did not want to meet any more strangers then; she was tired and shy, and she knew that her eyes were still swelled. She wanted, too, to have Miss Hammond to herself--she was so sympathetic and understanding, and so bright and interesting. Kitty had never before met any one like her, and was charmed.
”I will not say I want you two to be friends, or that I think you will like each other, for I know that that is the surest way to make you determine you never could, would, or should be. But I do think you will like Pamela, and I thought it would be nice for you to get to know one of your future companions a little before meeting them all together.”