est voice.

Alice was silent.

"I tell you what," said Kathleen. "When I see you beginning to help your
poor, exhausted mother, and running messages for that overworked
slavey--I think you call her Maria--then perhaps I'll do less. And when
there's some one else to mend the boys' socks, perhaps I won't offer;
but until there is, the less you say about such things the better, Miss
Alice Tennant."

Ben kicked David under the table, and David kicked him back to stay
quiet. Altogether the breakfast was a noisy one.

Kathleen went to school quite prepared to carry out her promise to Susy
Hopkins. She had neatly packed the little Irish diamond brooch in a box,
and had slipped under it a tiny note:

"Get as many foundation girls as you can to meet me, at
whatever place you like to appoint, this evening. I have a
plan to propose.--KATHLEEN O'HARA.

"_P.S._--You can name the place by pinning a note under my
desk. Be sure you all come. The plan is gloryious."

The thought of the note and the plan and the little brooch kept Kathleen
in a fairly good humor on her walk to school. There she saw Ruth Craven.
She was decidedly angry with Ruth for having, as she said to herself,
"snubbed her" the day before. But beauty always had a curious effect on
the Irish girl, and when she observed Ruth's really exquisite little
face, clear cut as a cameo, with eyes full of expression, and watched
the lips ready to break into the gentlest smiles, Kathleen said to
herself:

"It is all over with me. She is the only decent-looking colleen I have
met in this God-forsaken country. Make up to her I will."

She dashed, therefore, almost rudely through a great mass of incoming
girls, and seized Ruth by her shoulder.

"Ruth," she said, "go and talk to Susy Hopkins during recess. She will
have something to say, and I want you so badly. You won't refuse me,
will you, Ruth?"

"But I don't know what you want," said Ruth.

"Go and talk to Susy Hopkins; she will know. Oh, there she is!"

"Kathleen, Kathleen!" called out Alice. "The school-bell has just rung,
and they are opening the doors. Come do come."

"In a jiff," replied Kathleen.

She ran up to Susy.

"This is what I promised," she said; "and there is a note inside. Read
it, and give me the answer where I have asked you."

Susy Hopkins, a most ordinary little girl, who had no position of any
sort in the school, colored high with delight. Some of the paying girl