she could sympathize with others who did the same, and as she put it to
herself--"What can you do if you feel sorry for a person that you hated
only a little while before?"

Kitty could not understand the right and the wrong of these things, or
what to do under such circumstances. She wished she could, for they
made her feel mean to one side or the other, and nothing was really
further from her intention.

The next arrangement made--and this was an even greater blow to them
than the "banishment" of Dan--was that Kitty and Betty were to go as day
girls to school, instead of having Miss Pooley to the house.

The plan, being Aunt Pike's, would probably have been objected to in any
case; but to Kitty, with her shy dread of strangers--particularly girls
of her own age--the prospect was appalling, and she contemplated it with
a deep dread such as could not be understood by most girls.

Betty complained loudly, but soon found consolation. "At any rate," she
said, "we need not walk to school with Anna, and we needn't see as much
of her there as we should have to at home; and I think it will be rather
jolly to know a lot of girls."

"Do you?" sighed Kitty, looking at her sister with curious, wondering
eyes, and a feeling of awe. "I can't think so. I can't bear strange
girls." It seemed to her incredible that any one should _want_ to know
strangers, or could even contemplate doing so without horror.
She envied them, though, for being able to. "It must make one feel ever
so much more happy and comfortable," she thought, "to have nothing to be
afraid of." She would have given a very great deal not to feel shy and