e stooped down and kissed me.

"In your heart and mine," she answered. "But you mustn't talk, not yet.
Shut your eyes, and I will sing you to sleep." And I shut them. And I
knew I was in heaven, for heaven isn't a place; it's a feeling, and I
had it.

And that's how I met Miss Katherine.

Her father and mother are dead, just like mine. Her father was Judge
Trent, and his father once owned half the houses in Yorkburg, but lost
them some way, and what he didn't lose Judge Trent did after the war.

When her father died Miss Katherine wouldn't live with either of her
brothers, or any of her relations, but went to Baltimore to study to be
a nurse. After she graduated she didn't come back for three or four
years, and she hadn't been back six months when I was taken sick. And
now I sing:

"Praise God from whom that sickness flew."

Sing it inside almost all the time.

Miss Katherine don't have to be a nurse. She has a little money. I don't
know how much, she never mentioning money before me; but she has some,
for I heard Miss Bray and Mrs. Blamire talking one night when they
thought I was asleep; and for once I didn't interrupt or let them know I
was awake.

I had been punished so often for speaking when I shouldn't that this
time I kept quiet, and when they were through I couldn't sleep. I was
so excited I stayed awake all night. And from joy--pure joy.

I had only been back from the hospital a week, and was in the room next
to Mrs. Blamire's, where the children who are sick stay, when I heard
Miss Bray talking to Mrs. Blamire, and at something she said I sat up in
bed. Right or wrong, I tried to hear. I did.

They were sitting in front of the fire, and Miss Bray leaned over and
cracked the coals.

"Have you heard that Miss Katherine Trent is coming here as a trained
nurse?" she said, and she put down the poker, and, folding her arms,
began to rock.

"You don't mean it!" said Mrs. Blamire, and her little voice just
cackled. "Coming here? To this place? I do declare!" And she drew her
chair up closer, being a little deaf.

"That's what she's going to do." Miss Bray took off her spectacles. "The
Board can't afford to pay her a salary, but she's offered to come
without one, and next week she'll start in."

"Katherine Trent always was queer," she went on, still rocking with all
her might. "She can get big prices as a nurse, though she doesn't have
to nurse at all, having money enough to live on without worki