It was Christmas-time and the holidays were in full swing. For the time being The Red Gables was closed, the busy hum of young life was silent, although workmen of all sorts and descriptions were busy erecting that new wing which was to accommodate five foundation scholars of the great Howard Trust. Mrs. Fleming herself, in consequence, remained at the school during the winter holidays, and poor Peggy looked with longing eyes at her mistress, wishing much that she could stay with her.

“Why, thin, it’s meself that would like it,” she said; “ye have done me more good than any one else in all the wide world.”

The child looked at her mistress out of her large, loving eyes, and Mrs. Fleming felt a great pang at parting with her. There had been a time when she almost felt inclined to write to Paul Wyndham to ask him to let her keep the little girl for the first holidays, at least; but on second thoughts she made up her mind to trust Peggy, and to give her this trial, which, in reality, would be best for her character.

“It’s going to be very hard intirely,” said the child.

“Oh no, Peggy; you know now how to act, and you will always have my loving sympathy; and if you are in any difficulty you have only got to write to me, dear, and I will immediately tell you what I would advise you to do.”

“But ye don’t know, perhaps, ma’am, that The Imp is going to stay part of the holidays at Preston Manor.”

This was a considerable shock to Mrs. Fleming, and she had to confess that she did not know it.

“It’s Jessie who’s done it,” continued Peggy. “Of course, The Imp wants to go somewhere, and so she came round Jessie, and she’s coming along with us to-morrow. Oh thin, wurra!—I beg your pardon, ma’am—oh, thin, ye know how she hates me?”

“She won’t show her hatred, I trust, Peggy dear, and you must just keep out of her way.”

“I’ll try to do that same, dear madam.”

But Mrs. Fleming felt very uncomfortable, and fervently wished that she had been told sooner of Kitty’s visit to Preston Manor; it was now too late to interfere.

Kitty was in the highest possible spirits; she had won her way so far, although the invitation which she expected from Hillside was not, so far, forthcoming. “It will come, though,” said Kitty, as she was packing her things on the evening of the day before the school was to break up; “you leave it to me, and you see if it doesn’t come.”

The Dodds, however, were by no means so confident.

The next day there was a general breaking-up, saying good-bye to one another, and gay cries of “Merry Christmas” on all hands; and the school omnibuses drove away to the nearest railway station, from whence the young people were to be conveyed to their respective homes.

Kitty’s aunt, Miss Merrydew, was a woman who lived in a boarding-house at Folkestone. She had lived there for years, and was one of the greatest gossips that any of these houses of entertainment contained. Being such an old inhabitant, she was treated with a certain amount of respect, which was a good deal, however, mixed with fear, for it was not at all good for the ladies of the boarding-house if they fell out with Miss Gloriana Merrydew. Miss Gloriana was very fond of talking about her niece; she was proud of showing the photographs of pretty Kitty; she was fond of expatiating on the marvellous school where the child was educated; she was fond of relating all her small witticisms, and, as far as possible, making her out to be a great heiress. The other boarders listened, some with belief, some with a considerable amount of derision, a few with scepticism; but all liked to listen and all wondered how Miss Gloriana could have afforded to place Kitty at such an expensive school.

“It is two hundred per annum, I assure you,” said Miss Gloriana; “but her father, poor dear man, when he was dying, left special money for Kitty’s education, and I wouldn’t deprive the precious lamb of so much as a penny. She’s so beautiful that she’s likely to marry young, and I expect she’ll make a very good match. She’s the idol of the school, I can assure you.”

“And are we likely to see this charming young lady during the Christmas holidays?” asked one of the boarders, a certain Miss Glynn.

“No, I regret much we are not; but the fact is,” said Gloriana, “Kitty is in such immense request that she cannot spare her poor old auntie even a single day. She’s going to spend the greater part of the holidays with her friends the Wyndhams, at Preston Manor. You, of course, know the Wyndhams; they are some of our county people, some of the best folks in the whole of England. Afterwards she intends to go on to stay with the Dodds.”

“Well, that doesn’t sound a very aristocratic name,” said Miss Glynn.

“I’m not saying that it does, Miss Glynn, but sometimes people, even in our station of life, have to put up with mere wealth. The Dodds are enormously rich, and have taken such a great fancy to my Kitty that it is with the utmost difficulty I can keep Mr. and Mrs. Dodd from adopting her. That, of course, I could not consent to for a moment, but you can imagine how greatly the child is adored.”

Kitty, therefore, had very little difficulty in getting her own way; but, although Miss Gloriana could not deny the girl’s wish to spend the Christmas holidays with the Wyndhams, she put down her foot very firmly when it came to a question of expense.

“My dear,” she wrote, “I haven’t got it to give you. I have barely the money which your father set aside for your education; and when it is spent, unless you can get one of those Dodd girls to let you live with her, I’m sure I don’t know what you are to do. However, my dear Kitty, there is plenty of money to keep you at The Red Gables School for the next three years at least, and there is no good, in my opinion, looking farther ahead. As to fine dresses, I can’t give you another sou for your clothing; but surely you can get what you want from the Dodds?”

Now Kitty did most earnestly intend to get what she wanted from the Dodds, but for the first time the Dodds were frightened. They had, it is true, during the early part of the last term, been extremely lavish with regard to Kitty; they had spent all their pocket-money upon her and had given her several of their own dresses, which could easily be altered to fit her exceedingly charming little figure. But Mr. Dodd had written a severe letter, first to Grace and then to Anne, on the subject of their expenditure. He said that it was contrary to all reason to have to pay such enormous bills for mere schoolgirls.

“When you come out, my dears,” he said, “there’s nothing in the world I will deny you; but at present you are only schoolgirls, and I am not going any longer to have bills of the sort that Miss Weston is sending in; so don’t you think it. I have been showing them to your mother, and she says they’re outrageous.”

After this letter, Grace and Anne had to refuse Kitty’s demands for ten pounds to put into her pocket in order to have plenty of money in hand for her visit, and also for another evening frock.

“I’d give it you with a heart and a half,” said Grace.

“I’d give you every dress I possess myself,” said Anne; “but you don’t know what daddy is when he puts down his foot. He’s ever so cross. I can’t imagine what you did to him last summer, Kitty; up to then there was nothing he wouldn’t do for you; then, all of a sudden, he turned against you.”

“I tell you it will come right; it will come quite right,” said Kitty. “I tell you I can manage it; I am certain on the subject. There, I suppose I must do with what I have. You couldn’t let me have five pounds, could you?”

No, the girls could not even let her have five pounds; but, after much consultation, they managed to put three pounds into her pocket.

“And you must do with that, you really must,” said Anne, “until we meet again after the holidays. Oh dear,” she added, “what fun! Next term we’ll be trying for the prize as hard as we can. I hope the subject of the essay won’t be too difficult.”

“Well, I don’t suppose it matters much to you whether you win or not with all your enormous riches,” said Kitty.

“Oh but it does, I can assure you; it is just the very sort of thing that will delight dad. There’s nothing he won’t give us if we win the prize.”

“I wonder if he’d give me anything if I won it?” said Kitty.

“I expect he’d give you a great deal. He wrote me one letter about it,” said Grace, “and he said it was the most splendid thing he ever heard of, and he hoped both his girls would try for it.”

The Dodds, the Wyndhams, Kitty Merrydew, and Peggy Desmond occupied a carriage to themselves as far as the station where they were to separate. There the Wyndham motor-car was waiting to receive the four girls; it was a splendid new motor, covered in so as to shut away all cold winds. The Dodds also had a very smart motor-car waiting for them. Good-byes were said, Molly and Jessie invited the Dodds to come and see them during the holidays, which the Dodd girls promised to do—“that is, if daddy will consent”—and then they got into their car and drove home. The last thing they saw was the anxious and sweetly pretty little face of Peggy Desmond looking at them. She was whirled past in the Wyndhams’ motor-car.

“There! we’re alone at last!” said Anne. “Upon my word, I’m relieved.”

Grace did not speak at all for a minute; then she said, “You know, Anne, there is something very haunting about that Irish girl.”

“You mean Peggy Desmond?”

“Yes, of course; who else should I mean?”

“I agree with you,” said Anne. “I never saw such a pretty girl. I could be frightfully fond of her if it weren’t for Kitty.”

“I wish daddy would allow us to ask Peggy Desmond to stay with us at Hillside!” exclaimed Grace.

“Oh, what would be the use of that?” said Anne; “think what an awful time we’d have with Kitty when we went back to school!”

“That’s true enough. As a matter of fact, Gracie, I’m getting rather tired of Kitty.”

“Tired of her!” exclaimed Anne. “I’m sick of her; but there’s no getting out of it now.”

“I think,” said Grace, “she’s about the meanest girl I ever came across! The way she puts down that accident to poor little Peggy to me! You know what she’d have said if I’d let Peggy escape that time. I never meant to hurt her at all; but she ran so closely, and dodged me, and before I knew where I was I’d given her that awful blow. Oh it makes me sick! I can hear that bone crack in her leg now!”

“Don’t—don’t speak of it!” said Anne.

“I wish I didn’t dream of it,” said Grace. “It is awful to be going in for that prize with that load on my soul. I never felt so bad in my life as that day when we had to hold the Bible and say we knew nothing about it.”

“I wish I had the courage of Sophy,” was Anne’s remark.

“And so do I!” exclaimed Grace. “Oh there’s daddy! Doesn’t he look pleased to see us? One minute, Anne,” she continued. “We’ll be very careful what we say about Kitty, won’t we? We mustn’t encourage daddy to turn against her; it would never, never do.”

“You may be certain I won’t say anything against her,” said Anne; “I wouldn’t be so silly.—Daddy, here we are at last!”

“And welcome, my pets!” said Daddy Dodd, coming forward to welcome his offspring. He was a large, stoutly-made man, of between fifty and sixty years of age. His hair was grizzled and grew back from a lofty forehead; he had bushy eyebrows, small twinkling brown eyes, and a very large moustache. His shoulders were enormously square, and he had great brawny arms; those arms in their day had wielded heavy instruments, for Daddy Dodd had made his fortune by hard and unremitting toil. He had stood on the lower step of the ladder, and had gone conscientiously up and up and up, until he found himself in his present position. He was not “County;” oh no, but he was next door to County, and his girls should be County if he knew the meaning of the word. Through his wife’s influence he had managed to get them into the most select school in England. To him they were by no means plain—in fact, he thought Grace downright pretty. Grace reminded him of her mother, as she was when he was courting her; he adored Mrs. Dodd, and told her so about forty times a day. She was a gentle, good-natured, fairly ladylike woman; she and her John had stood shoulder to shoulder in the early days of their married life; for his sake she had denied herself every possible comfort; she had aided his ambitions, had fostered his toil, and encouraged his work; she had praised his endeavours, and had been the best of good wives to the best of husbands. She loved him devotedly, and now that the toil was over, and great wealth his, she rejoiced, because her John had really earned his riches. He had earned them in the sweat of his brow, and he had been straight. She loved Hillside, which had been built under John Dodd’s special supervision. She loved every scrap of the gaudy furniture, every token of wealth which surrounded her, because these things were John’s presents to his wife, and she loved John better than she loved her daughters, although she loved them, too, very dearly. She came out now to greet them.

“Oh, my dears,” she said, “welcome home! You must be very cold.”

“No, mother, we’re not cold a bit,” said Grace.

“Don’t they speak elegant?” said the father, moving back a space in the great hall and looking at them with satisfaction. “Grace, let me take a good long look at you.—Don’t you think she’s improved, mother?”

“Well, I think she’s about the same as she always was,” replied Mrs. Dodd.

“Now, not a bit of it, mother, not a bit of it; she’s coming on; she’s going to be a beauty like yourself, my dear.”

“Oh no, daddy,” exclaimed Grace, “I’m not a beauty at all; if you were to see the girls at school—Kitty and Peggy, yes, and even Priscilla—you wouldn’t call me pretty.”

“Kitty! Is that Imp still at the school?” said Dodd, his face puckering into a frown as he spoke.

“Why, of course, she is, father; why shouldn’t she be?”

“Ah, well, I could turn her out if I liked.”

“Daddy, why don’t you like poor little Kitty? She’s very fond of you.”

“No, she ain’t; she ain’t fond of me a bit; she’s fond of my money; that’s all she’s fond of. Now don’t let’s talk of her any more; but if there’s a thing which would make me send you two girls from The Red Gables it would be the thought of your spending so much time with Kitty Merrydew.”

“Your father has taken a dislike to her, children; don’t worry him on the subject,” said Mrs. Dodd. “Come upstairs now; you must be hungry. I’ve ordered a high tea for you both; your father and I are going to have tea with you instead of late dinner to-night.”

“Oh what fun that will be!” exclaimed Anne. She tucked her hand inside her mother’s arm, and they went up through the lofty, spacious house into an enormous bedroom, most beautifully furnished.

“I’m glad to see you home, my pets,” said the mother, kissing them both, and then looking at them with satisfaction. “I want you, my darlings, just for yourselves; but your father has set his heart on one of you being a beauty and the other a genius. What is all this talk about a prize?”

“Oh mother, it’s a very long story; we’ll tell it you presently,” said Anne.

“Mother,” said Grace, “I wonder if you can find out for us why daddy has turned against Kitty.”

“I can’t. I asked him once or twice, and he said I wasn’t to plague him.”

“But it seems so queer, because he began by liking her.”

“Well, I can’t satisfy your curiosity, girls, for I don’t know myself. All I can say is that she did something which turned him against her that time when she was here in the summer. Oh there isn’t a hope of his asking her back, not any hope; and, my dear girls, I trust you will make it clear to him how you spent such a frightful lot of money; you seem to have been very extravagant. As he said to me, ‘My purse would not be the long one it is if my wife had been like my girls are now.’ You mustn’t do it, children. Your father will ask you to account for every farthing before he pays Miss Weston’s bill, and I thought I had better prepare you for it.”

Grace felt herself turn a little pale. Anne looked at her sister and did not utter a word. The two girls had reason for their troubled looks; even home, even the beloved home, was not all that it should be just on account of Kitty. Why should Kitty’s evil influence follow these two poor girls everywhere?

When they were undressing in their lovely room that evening, they sent their maid away.

Grace jumped on the bed, and, stretching her long legs and folding her arms on the brass rail at the foot of the bed, looked straight at Anne. “Now,” she said, “however are we to manage about Miss Weston’s bill?”

“I haven’t an idea,” said Anne.

“It is something frightful,” continued Grace, “from what mother tells me, father is going to talk it all over with us. Miss Weston must be paid; and, more than that, the things that are ordered in our names belong to Kitty. How are we to get over the matter?”

“Has the bill come yet?” inquired Grace.

“Yes, Grace, that is the worst of it. Miss Weston, it seems from mother’s account, has sent in the bill she has sent for years—‘To account rendered,’ &c.—but father was very angry at the total being so large, and told mother to write and ask for items. That bill hasn’t come yet, but, of course, it will almost immediately. Of course, Miss Weston has no suspicions—why should she?—and she’ll just enter every item. There are our pretty white evening dresses, and those green things that Kitty made us get, I am certain, because she knew we’d be frights in them; but what about her crimson frock and that new dark-blue velvet which she insisted on getting in the middle of the term, trimmed with real lace too? And then, there’s that new pale primrose evening frock and two white India muslin frocks. She got those things quite lately, in order to be properly dressed at the Wyndhams’. Those items will swamp the bill. What is to be done?”

“I wonder,” said Grace, after a long pause, “if it would be any use confiding in mother? Mother would not like to see us ruined just for the sake of a few frocks.”

“I know that,” replied Anne; “but you know quite well, Gracie, that you and I would not be exactly ruined in the matter. We’d have a bad time, no doubt; but, still, nothing could part us from our father and mother and our home. No, it’s Kitty Merrydew I’m thinking about. For some extraordinary reason father has turned against Kitty, whom he used to be so fond of, and if he discovered that she had been buying frocks at our expense, why, he’d just go and see Mrs. Fleming and get her expelled from the school, or he’d take us away. Somehow or other I really think that poor Kitty is getting into hot water all round, and I’ve no doubt whatever if this awful thing were known that Kitty would go. That would ruin Kitty—ruin her for ever. Grace, we must not let it happen; at any risk we must prevent it. I don’t pretend that I love her as I did; but she used to be a great, great friend, and we must not let this happen. What is to be done?”

The girls pondered over this puzzle of puzzles, coming to no solution of any sort, and in consequence lying awake for some time even after their heads pressed their downy pillows. But perhaps the person who was even more anxious than the girls themselves was honest Mr. Dodd. He paced up and down his luxuriously furnished drawing-room, his hands thrust into his trouser-pockets, a frown between his brows. “Mary Anne,” he said to his wife, “I’m in a bit of a fluster.”

“And what’s that, John, my man?”

“Well, it’s about the girls.”

“I’m sure, John, I don’t know why you should be in a fluster about them; they look remarkably well.”

“It isn’t their looks; it’s nothing to do with their looks. I think Grace will be a very handsome woman, very like what you were, Mary Anne, in the days when I was courting you.”

“Handsome or not,” said Mrs. Dodd, “the great thing for Grace is to be good.”

“Oh, of course, my dear; do you think I’d own a girl who wasn’t straight? Of course, they’re both straight, straight enough; but I tell you what it is, Mary Anne. I don’t know how long they’ll stay straight if that Imp remains at the school; that’s what’s fretting me—it’s fretting me more than enough. Positively, I assure you, it’s taking my rest from me. I’m convinced, I’m positive, that that girl has a bad influence on my girls.”

“I wish, John, you’d tell me why you turned against Kitty. How well I remember when she came last summer you were so taken up with her; it was, ‘Kitty this,’ ‘Kitty that.’ Don’t you remember going to town one day and bringing her back a lovely gold hunter watch and a massive gold chain; and I said that, seeing she wasn’t rich, the present was a bit too handsome for her, but you wouldn’t listen to a word. Then what on earth can have changed you, John?”

“I have my reasons—I have my reasons,” was the response.

“And you’re not going to tell the old wifie?”

The ex-merchant went over and patted “old wifie” very fondly on the shoulder. “No, my duckydums,” he said, “no, I’m not going to tell anybody. There, let’s forget it. Of course, I can’t send the girl from the school.”

“Send Kitty Merrydew from Mrs. Fleming’s school! Why, my dear John, you’re mad! I assure you it was extremely difficult to get our girls into a school of that sort, and if we begin to interfere with Mrs. Fleming as regards her pupils, I tell you what it is, John, the sooner our girls are dismissed from the school the better pleased she’ll be.”

“You don’t think so really and truly?”

“Yes, and, what’s more, I am certain of it.”

“Oh well, that clinches the matter. I am as proud as Punch to have them at the school, and, what’s more, I’m thinking that after they leave they’d better go straight to Girton. I’m told it gives a girl a fine polish to send her to Girton. You see, in our case money is of no consequence, but we want to polish up—to polish up what’s rough, to rub away the rust, just to make the girls into fine ladies; that’s what we want.”

“To make the girls into good women,” said Mrs. Dodd.

Dodd stared for a minute at his wife. “I declare,” he exclaimed, “I declare, Mary Anne, how different you make things look! It’s quite wonderful how neatly you settle things. Yes, that’s it, and I’m a silly old man, thinking of turning my girls into fine ladies! If they’re women like you, Mary Anne, they’ll be blessings to their husbands some day, and to their children. Oh dear, what a silly old man I am, to be sure!”

“You’re not a silly old man, John, and I won’t allow you to say it. And now, if you’re not tired, I am. I’m going to bed.”

The girls thought and thought over what was to be done. Any minute Miss Weston’s bill might arrive, and any minute, as Anne remarked, “the fat might be in the fire.” The only thing possible to do was, after all, to consult with Kitty. Anne spoke to Grace on the subject.

“Gracie, there’s no way out of it.”

“Out of what?” asked Grace. “Has it come?”

“No, it hasn’t come this morning, and I have got mother to promise that she won’t open it until we are present, and do you know what I mean to do?”

“What—what is that, Anne?”

“I’m going to send a telegram to-day to Miss Weston, to ask her not to enclose the bill for a few days.”

“I never thought of that,” said Grace. “Still, I can’t make out what good it will do.”

“It will do this,” said Anne, “it will give us time.”

“But it must come in the end, and if she delays too long daddy will begin to champ. You know one of his fads is to have every debt he owes in the world finished off and paid up before the last day of the year.”

“I know that, and, of course, it will only give us two or three days; but, still, Christmas hasn’t come yet, and there’s time sufficient, anyhow. The next thing I am going to do is this: I’m going over to Preston Manor to-day. I’m going to ask dad to lend us the motor-car; I’m going to drive over. Jessie and Molly have both invited us, and, although it is a little soon, I am going, under the circumstances, to take advantage of it.”

“Well, all right, Anne; but, do you know, I don’t think I’ll go.”

“You won’t go?”

“No. I’ll stay with mother and daddy; they’d be so disappointed if both of us went away this first day of the holidays.”

“Perhaps you are right,” said Anne. “Well, anyhow, I must go over; I must see Kitty.”

Accordingly Anne’s plan was carried out. It was announced by both girls at breakfast. Mr. Dodd opened his eyes; for a minute he was inclined to storm.

Then his wife said, “But I say, my dear, it is a very great honour to be invited to Preston Manor; that’s what I call a real lift for our girls. They have never been at Preston Manor before.”

“No more they have, no more they have. Well, if you take it like that, Mary Anne.”

“Of course, I take it like that. But, Anne, child, wouldn’t it be better for you to wait until a proper invitation comes from Mrs. Wyndham?”

“Oh no, mother,” replied Anne, “because, you see, Jessie and Molly are at perfect liberty to invite any one they like, and they begged and implored of me—of us both—to come and see them immediately. The fact is, we are concocting some little amusement for the Christmas holidays, and we must talk it over, and the sooner the better.”

Grace looked with some wonder at her sister, who was inventing very nearly as cleverly as Kitty herself. But now the result of Anne’s cleverness was that an hour after breakfast she was whirling away in the beautiful motor-car in the direction of Preston Manor. First of all, however, she stopped at the post-office. There she sent a long, explanatory telegram to Miss Weston. The telegram ran as follows:

“Don’t send detailed account until you hear from me again, on any account whatever. Don’t take any notice of this telegram, but wait until you hear.

The telegram had been sent off; it was clicking away, indeed, on the little machine when Anne came flop up against her father, who was entering the post-office.

“Whither away, girlie?” he said, when he saw Anne.

“Oh, I was sending a message, daddy, to a friend.”

“Well, child, you needn’t get so red about it. I’m sure I’m the last to pry into your confidences. But don’t stay out too long, girlie, because I want you back again. Now let me put you in the car.”

He tucked her in, looking at her with pride. Really, she would be good-looking; she would be quite handsome with that colour in her face. But how very red she had got! Dear, dear, were his girls going to be afraid of him? That would be very unpleasant, the very last thing he would wish; he wanted them to adore him. Didn’t he think of them morning, noon, and night? Weren’t all his thoughts brimful of them, and yet his girl Anne had got scarlet, just as though she were afraid of him. It was too absurd; but, of course, she could not have been really afraid.

“It’s a very handsome motor,” he said, as he watched it out of sight. “I only wish I were going to Preston Manor—but there! of course, the girls will go where their old dad and the dear old mums can’t go. It’s the way of the world—the way of the world! I’m very pleased—very pleased with them on the whole, very, very pleased, and I thank the Almighty God for His great blessings. I’ve got a nice pair of girls. I’d have liked a boy, too, but it wasn’t the will of Providence to give me one, and girls get into less mischief—that’s what she says, dear old wife! Oh dear, oh dear, if they’re as handsome as she is, I’ll be satisfied, and I’ve every reason to imagine that they will be.”