Perhaps she shrank from the sight that might meet her eyes when the door was opened.
Mrs.Pike, far more agitated than her daughter, without waiting to hear any more, rushed along the corridor and up the stairs to the upper landing where all the children's rooms were, and flinging herself on Kitty's door, had burst it open before either Betty or Kitty could realize what was happening.

Betty, seriously frightened, sprang up in her bed with a shriek.

Kitty dropped her book hurriedly and sprang out on the floor.
"What is the matter ?" she cried, filled with an awful fear.

"Who is ill?
Father?
Tony ?" But at the violent change in her aunt's expression from alarm to anger her words died on her lips.
"How dare you! How dare you! You wicked, disobedient, daring girl, setting the place on fire and risking our lives, and wasting candles, and--and you know I do not allow reading in bed." "I wasn't reading," stammered Kitty--"I mean, not stories.

I was only learning my lessons.