CHAPTER XII.
When Kate had left the train, she was still two miles from St. James’s; and it was half-past three o’clock, so that she began to feel that she had run away without her dinner, and that the beatings of her heart made her knees ache, so that she had no strength to walk.
She thought her best measure would be to make her way to a pastry-cook’s shop that looked straight down the street to the Grammar School, and where it was rather a habit of the family to meet Charlie when they had gone into the town on business, and wanted to walk out with him. He would be out at four o’clock, and there would not be long to wait. So, feeling shy, and even more guilty and frightened than on her first start, Kate threaded the streets she knew so well, and almost gasping with nervous alarm, poppe
