“She shouldn’t have left it there,” said Betty primly.

“I expect it’s our shoes she’s felled over,” whispered Tony in a scared voice.  “I jumped over them when I came down, but I don’t ’spect Aunt Pike could.”

Dan and Betty looked at each other with guilty, desperate eyes.

“Well, you left yours first,” said Betty, anxious to shift all blame, “and you ran upstairs first, and—­and we did as you did, of course.”

“Oh, of course,” snapped Dan crossly, “you always do as I do, don’t you?  Now go out and tell Aunt Pike that, and suck up to her.  If she’s going to live here, it’s best to be first favourite.”  At which unusual outburst on the part of her big brother Betty was so overcome that she collapsed on to her chair again, and had to clench her hands tightly and wink hard to disperse the mist which clouded her eyes and threatened to turn to rain.

But a moment later the entrance of Aunt Pike helped her to recover herself—­Aunt Pike, with a white face and an expression on it which said plainly that her mind was made up and nothing would unmake it.  Betty and Tony stepped forward to meet her.

“How do you do, Elizabeth?—­How do you do, Anthony?  I should have gone to your bedrooms to see you, thinking naturally that you two, at least, would be in bed, but I was told you were still racing the country.  Anna goes to bed at seven-thirty, and she is a year older than you,” looking at Betty very severely.

“Is Anna here too?” asked Kitty, saying anything that came into her head by way of making a diversion.

“No, she is not.  She will join me later.  We were just about to move to another hydropathic establishment when your poor father’s letter reached me, and I felt that, no matter at what sacrifice on my part, it was my duty to throw up all my own plans and come here at once.”

“Then the postman must have missed my letter,” said Betty indignantly.  “What a pity! for it would have told you we didn’t want—­I mean, it would have saved you the trouble—­”

“It was your letter, Elizabeth, which decided me to come,” said Mrs. Pike, turning her attention to poor Betty.  “It reached me by the same post as your poor father’s, and when I read it I felt that I must come at once—­that my place was indeed here.  So I confided Anna to the care of friends, and came, though at the greatest possible inconvenience, by the next train.  And what,” looking round severely at them all, “did I find on my arrival?  No one in the house to greet me!  My nephews and nieces out roaming the country alone, no one knew where!  One maid out without leave, and the other—­well, you might almost say she was out too, for her head protruded so far from her bedroom window that I could see it almost from the bottom of the street.”

“Emily will hang out of window,” sighed Kitty.

“And when I reprimanded her she was most impertinent.  Is she always so when she is reprimanded, Katherine?”