t know it was half so late!" cried
Susanna, honestly surprised. "Time you was home and abed, Montgomery
Sturtevant, keepin' your poor grandmother up all hours like this, just
account your pranks. My suz! and such a day. May I never see another
like it!"

"Amen!" echoed poor Mr. Jones, so devoutly and in a voice of such
suffering that they all silently withdrew.

"Only nine o'clock? Does nobody ever sit up till a respectable hour,
here in Marsden? Why, at home, our evenings never began till after this
time," remarked Katharine, now so wide-awake, and, it must be confessed,
having had her nerves freshly excited by the recital of her woes to the
sympathizing ear of Uncle Moses.

"Pooh! N-n-nine o'clock's n-n-nothing," assented Monty, who had never
been out so late before in all his life.

"Isn't it?" asked Aunt Eunice, smiling. "Well, all the same, though it
is rude to dispatch a guest, I'm sure it is full time for you to be with
your grandmother, as Susanna justly remarked. She is doubtless anxious
about you; and as for you, Katy dear, you are living in quiet Marsden
now and not your city home."

The storm was fully over when they opened the great front door, and the
moonlight set all the rain-drenched shrubs and trees a-glitter, so that
Katharine exclaimed:

"Oh, look! It seems as if the world was just laughing at itself for
having been so naughty a little while ago!"

Aunt Eunice gave the child a little squeeze, thinking how "Johnny" would
have had just such a fancy, and Monty, wondering if all girls had queer
ideas, bade them good night and started whistling down the path.

"We'll stand here till you get beyond the first big tree, my lad, and
we'll follow you in our minds all the way," said Miss Maitland, kindly.
Then to Katharine she added, softly: "He's doing that to keep his
courage up."

"All the same he whistles beautifully," answered the girl, loyally. "If
he could only speak as well as he whistles it would be splendid. Why, up
there on the hay-mow to-day, some sort of bird--I think he said it was a
meadow-lark, or skylark, or something--anyhow, it sang ex-quis-ite-ly!
And he mimicked it so well I almost thought another bird had come
through the window into the barn. He's a real nice boy, Monty is,
but--but he needs some 'retouching,' as papa darling used to say of his
pictures."

"God bless him--and his own 'Kitty Quixote,'" murmured the old guardian,
touched to a tender softness by--ah, many things