“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,” Katy 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.
It was supper-time ere long, and after that was over Katy announced her intention of going to Linwood whether Morris were there or not.
“I can see the housekeeper and the birds and flowers,” she said, as she swung her straw hat by the string and started from the door.
“Ain’t Helen going with you?” Aunt Hannah asked, while Helen herself looked a little surprised.
But Katy would rather go alone. She had a heap to tell Cousin Morris, and Helen could go next time.
“Just as you like,” Helen answered, good-naturedly, and so Katy went alone to call on Morris Grant.
CHAPTER II.
LINWOOD.
Morris had returned from Spencer, and in his dressing-gown and slippers was sitting by the window of his library, looking out upon the purple sunshine flooding the western sky, and thinking of the little girl coming so rapidly up the grassy lane in the rear of the house. He was going over to see her by and by, he said, and he pictured to himself how she must look by this time, hoping that he should not find her greatly changed, for Morris Grant’s memories were very precious of the play-child who used to tease and worry him so much with her lessons poorly learned, and the never-ending jokes played off upon her teacher. He had thought of her so often when across the sea, and, knowing her love of the beautiful, he had never looked upon a painting or scene of rare beauty that he did not wish her by his side sharing in the pleasure. He had brought her from that far-off land many little trophies which he thought she would prize, and which he was going to take with him when he went to the farm-house. He never dreamed of her coming there to-night. She would, of course, wait for him, to call upon her first. How then was he amazed when, just as the sun was going down and he was watching its last rays lingering on the brow of the hill across the pond, the library door was opened wide and the room suddenly filled with life and joy, as a graceful figure, with reddish golden hair, bounded across the floor, and winding its arms around his neck gave him the hearty kiss which Katy had in her mind when she declined Aunt Betsy’s favorite vegetable.