But against this all exclaimed at once. She was too tired, the mother said. She must lie down and rest, while Helen suggested that she had not yet told them about her trip, and Uncle Ephraim remarked that she would not find Morris home, as he was going that afternoon to Spencer. This last settled it. Katy must stay at home; but instead of lying down or talking much about her journey, she explored every nook and crevice of the old house and barn, finding the nest Aunt Betsy had so long looked for in vain, and proving to the anxious dame that she was right when she insisted that the speckled hen had stolen her nest and was in the act of setting. Later in the day, and a neighbor passing by spied the little maiden riding in the cart off into the meadow, where she sported like a child among the mounds of fragrant hay, playing her jokes upon the sober deacon, who smiled fondly upon her, feeling how much lighter the labor seemed because she was there with him, a hindrance instead of a help, in spite of her efforts to handle the rake skillfully.
"Are you glad to have me home again, Uncle Eph?" she asked, when once she caught him regarding her with a peculiar look.
"Yes, Katy-did, very glad," he answered. "I've missed you every day, though you do nothing much but bother me."
"Why did you look funny at me just now?" Katy continued, and the deacon replied: "I was thinking how hard it would be for such a highty-tighty thing as you to meet the crosses and disappointments which lie all along the road which you must travel. I should hate to see your young life crushed out of you, as young lives sometimes are."
"Oh, never fear for me. I am going to be happy all my life long. Wilford Cameron said I ought to be," and Katy tossed into the air a wisp of the new-made hay.
"I don't know who Wilford Cameron is, but there's no ought about it," the deacon rejoined. "God marks out the path for us to walk in, and when he says it's best, we know it is, though some are straight and pleasant and others crooked and hard."
"I'll choose the straight and pleasant, then—why shouldn't I?" Kate asked, laughingly, as she seated herself upon a rock near which the hay cart had stopped.
"Can't tell what path you'll take," the deacon answered. "God knows whether you'll go easy through the world, or whether he'll send you suffering to purify and make you better."
"Purified by suffering," Kate said aloud, while a shadow involuntarily crept for an instant over her gay spirits.
She could not believe she was to be purified by suffering. She had never done anything very bad, and humming a part of a song learned from Wilford Cameron, she followed after the loaded cart, returning slowly to the house, thinking to herself that there must be something great and good in the suffering which should purify at last, but hoping she was not the one to whom this great good should come.