became apparent. Everything had happened that could happen. The long-talked-of European journey was over. Here was Katy at home again, months sooner than they expected, yet she looked remarkably cheerful and content! Clover could not understand it: she was likewise puzzled to account for one or two private conversations between Italy and Papa in which she had not been invited to take part, and the occasional arrival of a letter from `foreign parts' about whose contents nothing was said.
`It seems a dreadful pity that you had to come so soon,' she said one day when they were alone in their bedroom. `It's delightful to have you, of course, but we had braced ourselves to do without you till October, and there are such a lot of delightful things that you could have been doing and seeing at this moment.'
`Oh, yes, indeed!' replied Katy, but not at all as if she were particularly disappointed.
`Katy Carr, I don't understand you,' persisted Clover. `Why don't you feel worse about it? Here you have lost five months of the most splendid time you ever had, and you don't seem to mind it a bit! Why, if I were in your place my heart would be perfectly broken. And you needn't have come, either; that's the worst of it. It was just a whim of Polly's. Papa says Amy might have stayed as well as not. Why aren't you sorrier, Katy?'
`Oh, I don't know! Perhaps because I had so much as it was - enough to last all my life, I think, though I should like to go again. You can't imagine what beautiful pictures are put away in my memory.
`I don't see that you had so awfully much,' said the aggravated Clover. `You were there only a little more than six months - for I don't count the sea - and ever so much of that time was taken up with nursing Amy. You can't have any pleasant pictures of that.'
`Yes, I have; some.
`Well, I should really like to know what. There you were in a dark room, frightened to death and tired to death, with only Mrs Ashe and the old nurse to keep you company. Oh, yes, that brother was there part of the time! I forgot him--'
Clover stopped short in sudden amazement. Katy was standing with her back towards her, smoothing her hair, but her face was reflected in the glass. At Clover's words a sudden deep flush had mounted in Katy's cheeks. Deeper and deeper it burned as she became conscious of Clover's astonished gaze, till even the back of her neck was pink. Then, as if she could not bear it any longer, she put the brush down, turned, and fled out of the room, while Clover, looking after her, exclaimed in a tone of sudden comical dismay:
`What does it mean? Oh, dear me! Is that what Katy is going to do next?'