rgot the brightness of that day when the robins sang so merrily
above her head and all nature seemed to sympathize with her joy.
Afterward there came to her dark, wretched hours, when in her young
heart's agony she wished that day had never been, but there was no
shadow around her now, nothing but hopeful sunshine, and with a bounding
step she sought out Helen, to tell her the good news. Helen's first
remark, however, was a chill upon her spirits.

"Wilford Cameron coming here? What will he think of us, we are so unlike
him?"

This was the first time Katy had seriously considered the difference
between her surroundings and those of Wilford Cameron, or how it might
affect him. But Aunt Betsy, who had never dreamed of anything like
Wilford's home, and who thought her own quite as good as they would
average, comforted her, telling her how "if he was any kind of a chap he
wouldn't be looking round, and if he did, who cared; she guessed they
was as good as he, and as much thought of by the neighbors."

Wilford's letter had been delayed so that the morrow was the day
appointed for his coming, and never sure was there a busier afternoon
at the farmhouse than the one which followed the receipt of the letter.
Everything that was not spotlessly clean before was made so now. Aunt
Betsy in her petticoat and short gown going down upon her knees to scrub
the door sill of the back room, as if the city guest were expected to
sit in there. On Aunt Hannah and Mrs. Lennox devolved the duty of
preparing for the wants of the inner man, while Helen and Katy bent
their energies to beautifying their humble home and making the most of
their plain furniture.

"If Uncle Ephraim had only let me move the chimney, we could have had
a nice spare sleeping-room instead of this little tucked up hole," Mrs.
Lennox said, coming in with her hands covered with flour, and casting a
rueful look at the small room kept for company, and where Wilford was to
sleep.

It was not very spacious, being only large enough to admit the high post
bed, a single chair, and the old-fashioned washstand with the hole in
the top for the bowl and a drawer beneath for towels, the whole
presenting a most striking contrast to those handsome chambers on Fifth
Avenue, or, indeed, to the one at the Ocean House where Wilford sat
smoking and wishing the time away, while Helen and Katy held a
consultation as to whether it would not be better to dispense with the
parlor altogether a