and persevering."

Eric understood her, and even Alfred respected his sister the more for
what he could not understand.

"I wish I knew some way of making money faster," said Katie to her
brothers soon after; "a great deal, I mean. Mother wants any quantity of
things--blankets, and kitchen utensils, and table things, and she hasn't
a bonnet fit to go to church in. It takes about all we can make to feed
us all, and if there is any left she always uses it to buy things for us
instead of thinking about herself."

"I wonder how it is mothers never think of themselves," said Alfred.
"They are always fussing to make us happy, and we don't do things for
them at all."

Katie thought of the words:--

"As one whom his mother comforteth,"

which had been in last Sunday's lesson, but did not say them aloud, only
it was a comfort to her to think of the other holy words which say of a
mother and her child: "She may forget, yet will not I forget thee." No
matter how much a mother may love, God loves us better still.

One day about that time, Bertie Sanderson, following her usual custom
of looking around the room instead of at her work, saw something that
caused her to start, open her eyes very wide, and then mutter
half-aloud:--

"Oho! the saints are not so saintly after all. It's dishonest to look
around the room, is it? I wonder what you call that!"

"Bertie Sanderson, talking, as usual," said Miss Peters, marking the
fine upon the slate which she always carried with her," and Katie
Robertson, too," noting a sudden flush upon the face of the latter.
"I _am_ surprised."

"I did not speak," said Katie, respectfully, but with some confusion.

"There's no harm in talking to yourself," said Bertie, in the rude tone
which she usually addressed to Miss Peters.

"Were not those girls talking, Gretchen," said the superintendent,
appealing to a stout German who worked near the others.

"No, ma'am, I believe not; at least, Katie wasn't. I heard Bertie say
something, but Katie did not answer, but"--

"Never mind," said Miss Peters, who had got all she wanted,--a chance
to fine Bertie whom she hated,--"attend to your work," and she passed
on, never noticing the hand which Katie, having hastily thrust it into
her pocket, continued to hold there.

The work proceeded in silence, and, as Katie went home at four o'clock
as usual, Bertie did not have an opportunity to speak to her about the
strange thing she had n