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!"

And up they did get, but it did require courage: and the getting down
was even worse--their c