f
willfulness, or carelessness where their grandfather was concerned. But
she loved her brother dearly, and helped him through some difficulties
with others besides her grandfather, and Davie, having confidence in her
affections, submitted to her guidance, and was more influenced by her
opinions and wishes than he knew. And though she scolded him heartily
sometimes, and set her face against any disobedience or seeming
disrespect to their grandfather, she gave him good help often, and so
eagerly entered into all his plans, when she saw her way clearly to the
end of them, that he heeded her all the more readily when she differed
from him and refused her help.

So Mrs Fleming's dependence on Katie was not misplaced, and she
wondered at herself, when she had time to think about it, that she
should ever have supposed it possible that she could be spared from
home.

"But, oh, my dear!" said she one day to Katie's mother, "it's a woeful
thing to set up idols, and you must put me in mind, as I must put you,
that we're both in danger here. For who among them all is like our
Katie? Not but that she has her faults," added she, coming back to the
business of the moment, as she watched Katie letting her full pail run
over, while she enticed the kitten into a race after its tail: "Katie,
my woman, you should leave the like of that to wee Nannie; I think
you'll need all your time till supper-time.--But faults, did I say? It
is scarcely a fault to be lighthearted, and easily pleased. But oh,
Anne, my dear, we have need to take care."

CHAPTER TEN.

KATIE'S FRIENDSHIPS.

The life which healthy, good-tempered, unsophisticated children may live
on a farm has in it more of the elements of true enjoyment than can be
found in almost any other kind of life. If poverty or the necessity of
constant work press too severely upon them, of course the enjoyment is
interfered with, but not even poverty or hard work can spoil it
altogether. There are always the sunshine and the sweet air; there are
the freshness and the beauty of the early morning, which not one in ten
of the dwellers in town know anything of by experience; the dawn, the
sunrise, the glitter of dewdrops, the numberless sweet sounds and scents
that belong to no other time. Young people with open eyes and quick
sympathies find countless sources of interest and enjoyment in the
beautiful growing things of the woods and fields, and in the ceaseless
changes going on amo