"I want to tell you all before any one comes in. Isn't it delightful to have this sofa? I made father half a dozen shirts all by myself, and he was so pleased,—you can hardly think! He gave me twelve dollars to spend just as I pleased; but I told mother I would rather let it go towards a new sofa than to buy the finest dress. Nelly said it would be so much more comfortable than that hard, shabby thing, that looked as if it might have come out of Noah's Ark. So mother gave me fifteen,—she has all the money for the milk and butter and eggs,—and when father heard of it he added three more. I was afraid he would think I wanted to be too fine, but he only laughed a little. Mother and Nelly went to the city and bought it. I was so glad that I could have cried for joy, and I know father is very proud of it, though he does not say it in so many words."
"It is a very nice one, and furnishes the room quite prettily, beside the comfort of it."
"Jim made me this table, and Cousin Nelly and I covered it with paper and then varnished it over, and we have a pretty chintz one up stairs. Nelly and I have a room together now. I can keep everything so much more tidy than when the children pulled all the rubbish about. And look at my two new pictures!"
They were large colored engravings,—one, "The Wood-Gatherers," and the other the interior of a German peasant's cottage, where the mother was putting a babe to sleep in its odd wicker cradle.
"Jim bought them at a newspaper-stand one day, and only paid twelve cents apiece for them. He's powerful—no, I mean very fond of them. I am trying to leave off all those old-fashioned words and expressions. Then he made the frames, and Nelly and I covered them with pine-cones."
They certainly were very creditable.
"But how industrious you must be!" exclaimed Kathie. "You still go to school?"
"Yes. I wouldn't give that up for half the world. You see Cousin Nelly helps mother a good deal, and she helps me too. I have been telling her ever so much about you, how good and lovely you were. But O, wasn't I a clown and an ignoramus when you first saw me! I don't wonder that girl laughed, though it was hateful in her; but I shall never, never forget how kind you were. O Miss Kathie, it seems to me if the real nice people in the world would only help the others a bit, we should get along so much faster. I feel as if I'd had it in me all the time,—a great hungry longing for something,—and I find now that it is beauty and order and knowledge."
Sarah's face was in a glow, and her steady, ardent eyes held in them a soft and tender light. It seemed to Kathie that she was really pretty, or something more than that,—electrified with soul beauty.
"Father pretends that he is afraid I shall get too proud and not be good for anything, though he was ever so much pleased when he saw the parlor in such nice order. And he thought the shirts a wonder. I shall not be sixteen until November, and there are girls older than I who could not do it. In vacation I am going to make Jim a whole new set of nice ones with linen bosoms."