Like a shock of cold water upon an exhausted body, fell Alvin's request upon Katy's weary, tired soul. When the necessity for an English entertainment was made clear to Katy, plans were immediate, execution prompt. Katy had known at once what she would do. She forgot now that she had no way of earning money; she did not anticipate that to her honest soul the burden of a debt would be almost as great as the burden of remembered theft. Boldly she presented herself to the squire in his office and there made her request. Nothing was plain to Katy except Alvin's bitter need.
The squire looked at her in astonishment.
"That is a good deal of money, Katy!" But the squire had seen Katy at her books. "You need books, I suppose, and things to wear. I see you studying and sewing, Katy. You are not to slip back in your studies before you go away."
"I will give you a paper and I will pay interest," promised Katy, who did not wish to discuss the spending of the money.
The squire went slowly to his safe. It must be very dismal for the child. His poor sister-in-law was not likely to improve, and she might, alas! be a long time dying. If the situation were not changed by fall, the child must be sent away and Edwin must come home to live. He remembered his own bright little sister; he remembered the plans of all the family for Katy. A sudden remorseful consciousness that they had forgotten Katy, and that they had left a good many burdens on her shoulders, moved him to give her the foolish sum for which she asked.
"This I give you, Katy," said he as he counted the money into her hand. It was not strange that the squire had taken so few journeys.
"No," protested Katy with a scarlet face; "it is a debt."
Recklessly Katy slipped the money into an envelope and mailed it, and Alvin, receiving it, wept for joy and thought with gratitude of the sender. The small part of it which he did not have to use to pay his most pressing debts he spent upon a girl from the county seat, one Bessie Brown, who had visited a friend at the normal school, and for whom he had great admiration.