a is better. Give Tony my love, and tell
him he was a perfect dear to give me his precious piece of spar.
I shall always take it with me wherever I go. I will write to him next
time. Mind you write and tell me everything, and give my love to Fanny,
and Jabez, and Grace, and kiss Prue and Billy for me. Kiss Prue on her
dear old cheek and her soft nose.--Your loving sister,

"Kitty."

CHAPTER XVII.

"GOOD IN EVERYTHING."

Betty's satisfaction, though, ended with the day. "I am never happy one
day but what I've _got_ to be unhappy the next," she said plaintively to
her father the following evening, when telling him her woes.

"You might put it another way," he said, smiling, "and say you are never
very unhappy one day but what you are very happy the next."

Betty shook her head gravely. "But I am not," she said. "I can't be
_sure_ I am going to be happy, but I can be that I am going to be
unhappy, and sometimes it lasts for ever so long."

"You poor little suffering martyr," said Dr. Trenire, "what is wrong
now?"

"It's my stockings," said Betty solemnly.

"Whatever is wrong with your stockings? Stand still, child, can't you,
and tell me."

"No," said Betty, "I can't, my legs itch so. I am sure I shall be crazy
before long. I _almost_ wish I'd been sent away to school too, then I
could give them away, as Kitty has."

"Given away what?--her legs? What made Kitty do it, and what is wrong
with the stockings? Are they new, that they have only just begun to
irritate you?"

"No, they aren't new, but--well, you see, I've only just been found
out."

"What _do_ you mean?"

"Well, you see, Aunt Pike would make us wear these ugly, woolly, itchy
things, and "--Betty's voice waxed indignant--"she wouldn't believe us
when we said we couldn't, and so--well, I thought of it first--we wore
our black cotton ones under these, and then we didn't feel them."

"I see," said Dr. Trenire, a smile beginning to twinkle in his eyes.
"And you were not found out?"

"Not till to-day," with a triumphant air; "but to-day there was a hole
in the gray ones, and I didn't know it; but Aunt Pike saw the black
showing through, and she screamed out, 'Elizabeth, _what_ has happened
to your leg?' And oh! I did jump so; and then I looked, and there was
a great black spot, and everybody was looking and laughing. It was--oh,
it was dretful, and Aunt Pike was _so_ angry, she made me go home and
take off the black ones; and n