"Ach, Katy!" protested Sarah Ann, "are you not going to be high gelernt?" Sarah Ann suspected some difficulty at home; her sympathetic soul was distressed for Katy. "You can come any time and live with me."
"Won't you ever go to your uncle any more?" asked Susannah Kuhns, her frank inquiry voicing the curiosity of Millerstown.
Katy turned and faced them.
"Why, certainly I will. I will go there every day."
Alvin Koehler had opened the Millerstown school and had already rented a house from William Knerr the elder. Katy saw him almost daily; he had even stopped her on the street to tell her that he had not forgotten her. He exuded satisfaction with himself from every pore; he would even have told her about his Bessie if Katy had lingered for an instant.
"She is not so good-looking as she once was, Katy isn't," said Alvin as he looked after her.
David Hartman had gone when she reached his mother's house. Mrs. Hartman lay upon the settle in the kitchen. Her face was pale; she sat up with difficulty when Katy came in. She knew little of the affairs of Millerstown; she did not speculate about the reasons for Katy's presence in her house.
"It is a long time since my house was cleaned right," she complained. "We must begin at the top and clean everything. To-day, though, we will clean David's room. That is where you are to sleep. You can first scrub the cupboards and dust the books and put them away in the cupboard. He has many, many books and they gather dust so. Then stuff a dust-cloth tight under the door while you clean the rest. And take the bed apart so you can dust it well."
Mrs. Hartman lay down, breathless. The Gaumers had the reputation of being fine housekeepers; she hoped that her house would again be restored to cleanliness. Her son, with his untidy, mannish ways, was gone; peace had returned.
By Saturday Katy had become acquainted with the attic of the great house, the house which in her childhood had been to her the abode of Mystery. The attic, with its store of discarded but good furniture, its moth-guarded chests, was clean; it had been swept, whitewashed, aired, scrubbed, made immaculate. Each garment had been carried down to the yard, had there been beaten and sunned, and then had been restored to its proper place. Cassie, making her painful way to the third story, pronounced the work good. The next week the bedrooms were to be similarly treated. Into their magnificence Katy had peered, round-eyed. Here was no mystery, here was only grandeur. Thus Katy would have furnished her house.