Kitty shuddered, but not at the prospect drawn for her by her aunt.  “Father knows that we can’t,” she said seriously, “so he never tried to make us.”

Betty, who had been absorbed in thought, looked up eagerly.  “I would much rather have rheumatism than itchy stockings,” she protested quite gravely.  “I don’t mind a bit, Aunt Pike.  And—­well, you see we can’t be sure that we shall have an old age, or rheumatics.”

Mrs. Pike grew really angry.  “Put on those stockings at once, miss, and fasten them to your suspenders.—­Kitty, fasten yours too.”

“Oh, please let me wait,” cried Kitty, “before I pull them tight; it is so awful.”

“Nonsense!  It is more than half of it fancy.  Remember you are to wear them until the warm weather comes,” and with that Aunt Pike walked away triumphant.

“Oh, how hideous they are!” groaned Kitty, as she looked disgustedly at her striped legs; “how perfectly hideous!  I shall be ashamed to go out in them.  What will Dan say when he sees them?”

“It is worse for me,” wailed Betty, “my dress is so short.  O Kitty, how can we ever walk in these dreadful things?”

“I don’t know,” said Kitty bitterly, “but we’ve got to.  It is a good thing we have something nice to do to-day, for it may help us to forget.”  But nothing made them do that; the discomfort went with them everywhere, and destroyed their pleasure in everything.

Earlier in the day Dr. Trenire had said that they might all go to the station to meet Dan; and they went on top of the ’bus, and alone too, for Anna did not break up until the next day, and the weather was lovely, and everything might have been perfect, if only they could have forgotten their tortured legs.  But to do that was more than they were capable of, for, in addition to the torture of them, there was the consciousness of their extraordinary ugliness, an ugliness which caught every eye.

“What on earth have you all got yourselves up in?” was almost Dan’s first greeting.  “I say, you aren’t going to do it often, are you?”

And Betty straightway explained with much vehemence and feeling the torment of mind and body to which they had been condemned.

“They look like Aunt Pike,” said Dan.  “No one else could have unearthed such things.  There is one comfort—­we shall always be able to see you coming when you have them on.  Now then, mount, or we shan’t get outside seats.”

But when Kitty, more than ever conscious after Dan’s comments, looked at the steps and the little crowd of people who would witness her ascent, and thought of her dreadful stockings, her heart failed her.  “I—­I think I will go inside,” she said hastily.

“So will I,” said Betty, shamefaced too.

“Nonsense,” cried Dan, guessing at once what was the matter.  “You two skip up first, and I’ll follow close to hide your le—­retreat, I mean.  I am not going to be done out of our drive home together.  Now then, courage—­up you get!”