at news?" "He
will be here on Friday, and he wishes us to see that all things are in
order at Linwood for his reception. His eyes are badly diseased, but he
is not blind, and he hopes that coming back to us will cure him," she
added, glancing aside at Katy, who sat upon a step of the piazza, her
hands folded together upon her lap and her blue eyes looking far off
into the fading sunset, just as Evangeline sits looking down the
Mississippi River.

When she heard Morris' name she turned her head a little, so that the
ripple of her golden hair was more distinctly visible beneath the silken
net she wore, and a deep tinge of red dyed her cheeks; but she made no
comment or showed by any sign that she heard what they were saying. Katy
was very lovely and consistent in her young widowhood, and not a whisper
of gossip had the Silvertonians coupled with her name since she came to
them, leaving her husband in Greenwood. There had been no parading of
her grief before the public or assumption of greater sorrow than many
others had known; but the soberness of her demeanor, and the calm,
subdued expression of her face, attested to what she had suffered.
Sixteen months had passed since Wilford died, and she still wore her
deep mourning weeds, except the widow's cap, which, at her mother's and
Aunt Betsy's earnest solicitations, she had laid aside, substituting in
its place a simple net, which confined her waving hair and kept it from
breaking out in flowing curls, as it was disposed to do. Against this
fashion Aunt Betsy also inveighed.

"Couldn't a body curl their hair when nater intended it to curl, and
mourn a-plenty, too?" For her part, she believed it people's duty to
look as well as they could, mournin' or not mournin', and Katy couldn't
look much wus' than she did, with her hair shoved back under that net,
unless it was when she wore that heathenish cap, which made her look so
like a grandmother.

This was Aunt Betsy's opinion, but to others there was something
singularly sweet and beautiful in the childish face, from which the
golden hair was brushed back so plainly, waving softly about the
forehead, and occasionally escaping from its confinement in a graceful
curl, which Katy suffered to remain for Aunt Betsy's sake. Katy had
never been prettier than she was now, in her mature womanhood, and to
the poor and sorrowful, whose homes she cheered so often, she was an
angel of goodness.

Truly she had been purified by suffering