"I'd like to, Tip, but I don't look decent to go anywhere. I've only this dress and my old hood."
"I wouldn't mind that," said Tip. "I've only this awful old jacket either, but I mean to go. Hurry up the dishes, and let's go."
"Well," said Kitty at last, "I will; but what will mother say?"
"I'll fix that." And Tip stepped softly into the bedroom. "Are you better to-night, father?"
"Not much better, I guess. How's arithmetic to-day?"
"First-rate; Mr. Burrows said I was getting ahead fast. Mother, may Kitty go out with me to-night? I'm going up to the church to prayer-meeting."
Mrs. Lewis turned from the basket where she had been hunting long, and as yet in vain, for a piece of flannel, and bent a searching bewildered look on her son.
"I don't care," she said at last; "she can go if she likes; but I doubt if she will."
She did, however; in ten minutes more the two were walking along the snowy path. Kitty was sober. "Tip," she said presently, "don't you never get real awful mad, so mad that you feel as if you'd choke if you couldn't speak right out at somebody?"
"Well, no," said Tip, "not often. Yes, I do too; I get mad at Bob Turner sometimes, mad enough to pitch him into a snow-bank; but it don't last long."