"
Alice made no reply, and Mrs. Tennant, after thinking for a minute, went
upstairs. She knocked at the door of the room which she had given up to
the two girls. There was no answer. She opened it and went in. The bird
had flown. There were evident signs of a stampede through the window,
for it stood wide open, and there were marks of not too clean boots on
the drugget, and a torn piece of ivy just without. The window was twenty
feet from the ground, and Kathleen must have let herself down by the
sturdy arm of the old ivy. Mrs. Tennant looked out, half expecting to
see a mangled body on the ground; but there was no one in view. She
returned to her darning and her anxious thoughts.
She was a widow with two sons and a daughter, and something under two
hundred and fifty pounds a year on which to live. To educate the boys,
to do something for Alice, and to put bread-and-butter into all their
mouths was a difficult problem to solve in these expensive days. She had
on purpose moved close to the Great Shirley School in order to avail
herself of its cheap education for Alice. The boys went to another
foundation school near by; and altogether the family managed to scrape
along. But the advent of Kathleen on the scene was a great relief, for
her father paid three guineas a week for Mrs. Tennant's motherly care
and for Kathleen's board and lodging.
"Poor child!" thought the good woman. "What a wild, undisciplined,
handsome creature she is! I must do what I can for her.
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