E-text prepared by Roger Frank
and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
(http://www.fadedpage.com)

“‘Here is a little souvenir for you, Judge Arthur.’”
Frontispiece. See page 266.

The Wide Awake Girls Series

THE

WIDE AWAKE GIRLS

IN WINSTED

BY

KATHARINE RUTH ELLIS

Author of “The Wide Awake Girls”

Illustrated from drawings by

SEARS GALLAGHER

Boston

Little, Brown, and Company

Copyright, 1909,
By Little, Brown, and Company.

All rights reserved

Printers
S. J. Parkhill & Co., Boston, U. S. A.

To

GLADYS GODDARD

who has been the friend of many boys and girls
this book is affectionately inscribed.

PREFACE

The author wishes to acknowledge gratefully the kindness of Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin and Company in allowing her to use the poem Vantage, by Josephine Preston Peabody in this book. She also thanks Miss Margaret Sherwood for consenting to a similar use of her poem, Indian Summer.

Books for girls are frankly suggestive, their value lying in their kindling power. Among the girls of all sorts who may read this story, there will be, here and there, one who loves right words. It is for the sake of such an occasional reader that the poems mentioned have been included. The schools sometimes lead their pupils to believe that English literature, like Latin, belongs to the past. But there are, here and now, “musicians of the word” who, partly because they are living, can touch our hearts as none of the dead-and-gone ones can. If through these pages some girl finds her way to the little green volume of Singing Leaves, or the sweet stories of Daphne and King Sylvaine and Queen Aimée, Catherine Smith and her friends will have done the world of girls a service worth the doing.

CONTENTS

CHAPTERPAGE
I.Catherine’s Inspiration[3]
II.Getting Started[15]
III.Organization[28]
IV.With Pail and Broom[46]
V.A Day Off[58]
VI.The Opening[71]
VII.A Party at Polly’s[86]
VIII.A Fortunate Meeting[101]
IX.Landing[109]
X.The Making of a Compact[120]
XI.Brookmeadow[133]
XII.Arrival at Winsted[151]
XIII.Caught in a Shower[164]
XIV.An Interlude[176]
XV.Sunday School[186]
XVI.Alice on the Way[203]
XVII.Finding a Vocation[212]
XVIII.Doctor’s Orders[221]
XIX.Journalism[246]
XX.The Three R’s[254]
XXI.The Last Party[271]
XXII.Auf Wiedersehen[284]

ILLUSTRATIONS

“Here is a little souvenir for you, Judge Arthur”[Frontispiece]
PAGE
“We must find a good place for it”[17]
“How much for your tickets?”[77]
“Sure I am not too heavy, Karl?”[112]
Frieda was telling a story and the others were listening attentively[184]

PART ONE

STARTING A LIBRARY