"But we're not Catholics. Oh, I wish you would come to our church and our Sunday-school! It's just as nice!—there's Miss Etta, and Bertie and Gretchen and Cora, and two or three more, and on Wednesday Miss Eunice invites our class and hers to tea, and reads to us, and we have a society and work for missions and—oh, it's so nice!" said enthusiastic Katie.
"Do you go to Sunday-school just to have nice times?" and Tessa opened her black eyes very widely.
"No," said her friend, more soberly; "I think I go there to learn more about Jesus, and how to love him more and serve him better. Some of us hope to join the church soon."
Tessa asked some questions that led to a long talk which lasted till they had reached the Fawn's Leap, which was a beautiful little waterfall shooting down between two high rocks, from one of which to the other a fawn was reputed to have sprung. It was a very lovely spot, and the two girls threw themselves upon the grass to rest, while the Italian drew long inspirations of delight.
"It makes me think of home," she said; "the old home in Italy. We lived, my father and I, close to a waterfall just like this, among the mountains. After my mother died my father did not want to stay there, so he went to Naples and bought an organ, and we came to America in a big ship, and wandered about, and then"—her voice broke down then and she said: "Oh, Katie, I am so lonely! if I only had a home like yours, with people in it to talk to and to be kind to me, I should not want to read so many stories. I don't believe they are good for me." This was in reference to all Miss Eunice's talk about the evils of novel-reading as repeated by Katie.
A sudden thought struck the latter.
"Tessa," she said, "it must be awfully lonely at your boarding-house in the evenings and on Sundays. I wish you could come and live with me. I have no companions but the boys, and to have you would be just splendid."
"Do you think I could? Do you think your mother would let me? Oh, Katie, you can't really mean it!"
Katie had not taken her mother into consideration. Of course, she could not be sure of her approbation of such a plan, but she promised to ask, and went on planning how nice it would be—how the two girls could share Katie's room and bed; how they could go to the mill together. "And then," said she, "you could go to Sunday-school with me, Tessa."
But here Tessa drew back. She had no clothes, she said, fit to go to church in—only her working-dress and the straw hat which she wore every day to the mill.