"What were you going to say, Miss Moore?" said the Squire as soon as the brown eyes opened.
"I thought, perhaps, I might find something to do here—I'm looking for work."
"Why, my dear," said Mrs. Bartlett, smoothing the dark curls, "you are not fit to stand, let alone work."
"You could not earn your salt," was the Squire's less sympathetic way of expressing the same sentiment. "Where is your home?"
"I have no home." She looked at them desperately, her dark eyes appealing to one and the other, as if they were the jury that held her life in the balance. Only one pair of eyes seemed to hold out any hope.
"If you would only try me I could soon prove to you that I am not worthless." Unconsciously she held out her hand in entreaty.
"Here we are, here we are, all off for Boston!" The voice was Hi's. He was just turning in at the field gate with Kate beside him. Kate, a ravishing vision, in pink muslin; a smiling, contented vision of happy, rosy girlhood, coming back to the home-nest, where a thousand welcomes awaited her.
"Hello, every one!" she said, running in and kissing them in turn, "how nice it is to be home."
They forgot the homeless stranger and her pleading for shelter in their glad welcome to the daughter of the house. She had shrunk back into the shadow. She had never felt the desolation, the utter loneliness of her position so keenly before.
"Hurrah for Kate!" cried the Squire, and everyone took it up and gave three cheers for Kate Brewster.