perpetual Christmas-tree of second-hand gifts. Wealthy aunts supplied
her with cast-off shoes of all sizes, from two and a half up to five,
and she used them all. She was reported to have worn one straw hat
through five changes of fashion. It was averred that, when square crowns
were in vogue, she flattened it over a tin pan, and that, when round
crowns returned, she bent it on the bedpost. There was such a charm in
her way of adapting these treasures, that the other girls liked to
test her with new problems in the way of millinery and dress-making;
millionnaire friends implored her to trim their hats, and lent her their
own things in order to learn how to wear them. This applied especially
to certain rich cousins, shy and studious girls, who adored her, and
to whom society only ceased to be alarming when the brilliant Kate
took them under her wing, and graciously accepted a few of their newest
feathers. Well might they acquiesce, for she stood by them superbly, and
her most favored partners found no way to her hand so sure as to dance
systematically through that staid sisterhood. Dear, sunshiny, gracious,
generous Kate!--who has ever done justice to the charm given to this
grave old world by the presence of one free-hearted and joyous girl?

At the time now to be described, however, Kate's purse was well filled;
and if she wore only second-best finery, it was because she had lent her
very best to somebody else. All that her doting father asked was to pay
for her dresses, and to see her wear them; and if her friends wore a
part of them, it only made necessary a larger wardrobe, and more varied
and pleasurable shopping. She was as good a manager in wealth as in
poverty, wasted nothing, took exquisite care of everything, and saved
faithfully for some one else all that was not needed for her own pretty
person.

Pretty she was throughout, from the parting of her jet-black hair to the
high instep of her slender foot; a glancing, brilliant, brunette beauty,
with the piquant charm of perpetual spirits, and the equipoise of a
perfectly healthy nature. She was altogether graceful, yet she had not
the fresh, free grace of her cousin Hope, who was lithe and strong as a
hawthorne spray: Kate's was the narrower grace of culture grown
hereditary, an in-door elegance that was born in her, and of which
dancing-school was but the natural development. You could not picture
Hope to your mind in one position more than in another; she had a