Three weeks later, as Katharine went into the room and dropped two or three scarlet carnations on the girl's idle hand, she was saluted with exciting news.
"A letter from home, to-day, Miss, and somebody has sent money enough to pay the children's board for ever and ever so long; and they don't know at all who it is. Isn't it wonderful!"
Not so wonderful, perhaps, as it appeared to the simple girl. No one but Katharine and her parents ever saw the letter that went hurrying westward to remind her father that Christmas was coming, and to tell him in what way she would prefer to take her present. The secret was kept, and no thanks were ever spoken; but Katharine cared for none. It was enough to watch the girl's happy content, now that her one anxiety was removed. Mrs. Hapgood, alone, had a suspicion, when Molly told her of the affair; but she wisely asked no questions, and in silence rejoiced over the broader sympathy her niece was daily gaining.
"How queer it is, the way things are divided up!" Katharine said to Molly, one day when they were out driving.
It was a clear, cold December day, and Cob trotted briskly over the frozen ground, as if he too, as well as the girls themselves, were enjoying the air and motion.
"What is divided up?" asked Molly vaguely, rousing herself from a half-formed plan for Alan's Christmas present.
"Oh, everything,—at least, everything isn't divided," returned Katharine a little incoherently. "Some of us have so much more fun out of things than other people do. There's us; and then there's Bridget and that little pet of Polly's, Dicky what's-his-name. You know the one I mean. And then, just in our set, there's ever so much difference. Jessie and I have everything we want, and Jean has to pinch and scrimp; Jean is as strong as a bear, and Alan can't do anything at all, without being laid up to pay for it; Polly wails for a family of young brothers, and Jean has more of them to take care of than the old woman that lived in a shoe. Now what's the reason things are so mixed up, I'd like to know."
"I can't see why myself," said Molly, tucking in the robe about herself and her cousin. "Maybe, if we knew all about it, they aren't as mixed up as they seem."
"Yes, they are," Katharine insisted. "If they weren't, some people wouldn't have everything, and some go without, as they do. I don't suppose there is much of anything in the world I couldn't do, if I wanted to, and tried hard enough for it; but everybody isn't so."
"I have sort of an idea," answered Molly profoundly, "that most everybody can get what she wants, if she is willing to work and wait long enough. It's only a question of what you want."