"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?"

"We--we don't reprimand her," admitted Kitty. "I am afraid she would be
if we did," she added honestly.

At that moment Dan burst into the room carrying a bottle. "If you put
some of this on the bruises," he said, offering it to his aunt, "it'll
take the pain out like anything. Jabez has it for the horses, and I've
used it too; it is capital stuff."