ing
both Helen and Katy to the theatre that night. But Katy answered: "No,
Wilford, not to-night; it seems too much like baby's funeral. I'll go
next week, but not to-night."

So Katy had her way, but among the worshipers who next day knelt in
Grace Church with words of prayer upon their lips, there was not one
more in earnest than she whose only theme was, "My child, my darling
child."

She did not get over it by Monday, as Mrs. Cameron had predicted. She
did not get over it at all, though she went without a word where Wilford
willed that she should go, and even Helen, with her sounder health and
stronger constitution, grew tired of that endless round, which gave her
scarcely a quiet hour at home. And Katy was a belle again, her name on
every lip, her praise in every heart, for none could feel jealous, she
bore her honors so meekly, wondering why people liked her so much and
loving them because they did. And none admired her more than Helen, who,
scarcely less a belle herself, yielded everything to her young sister
whom she pitied while she admired, for nothing had power to draw one
look from her blue eyes, the look which many observed, and which Helen
knew sprang from the mother love, hungering for its child. Only once
before had Helen seen a look like this, and that came to Morris' face on
the sad night when she said to him, "It might have been." It had been
there ever since, and Helen, though revering him before, felt that by
the pangs with which that look was born he was a better man, just as
Katy was growing better for that hunger in her heart. God was taking his
own way to purify them both, but the process was going on and Helen
watched it intently, wondering what the end would be.

CHAPTER XXVII.

AUNT BETSY GOES ON A JOURNEY.

Just through the woods, where Uncle Ephraim was wont to exercise old
Whitey, was a narrow strip of land, extending from the highway to the
pond, and fertile in nothing except the huckleberry bushes, where the
large, dark fruit grew so abundantly, and the rocky ledges over which a
few sheep roamed, seeking for the short grass and stunted herbs, which
gave them a meager sustenance. As a whole it was comparatively
valueless, but to Aunt Betsy Barlow it was of great importance, as it
was her own--her property--her share--set off from the old estate--the
land on which she paid taxes willingly--the real estate the deed of
which was lying undisturbed in her hair trunk, where it had