child whom anybody
would have hurried to comfort and humor. "I want to do what's right, I'm
sure;" and her red under lip began to tremble and the water to gather in
her eyes. She sat down to hear the rest of the lecture, but her mother
stopped short. Presently, when the chickens came clucking, she went to
mix their meal as usual, very pale and dolorous.

In an hour she put her head in at the shop-window, her eyes sparkling:
"There's two new chicks in the corn-bin nest, and they're full-blooded
bantams, I'm sure, father."

"She's not fit to be married!" cried Mrs. Guinness excitedly. "She is
both silly and unfeeling. God only knows how I came to be the mother of
such a child! The great work before her she cares nothing about; and as
for Mr. Muller, she doesn't value him as much as a bantam hen. It's her
narrow intellect. Her brain is small, as Bluhm said."

It was his wife's conscience twitting her, Peter knew. "I would not be
uneasy," he said with a cynical smile. "You can't bring love out of her
by that sort of friction." But he was himself uneasy. If Catharine had
been gloomy, or even thoughtful, at the prospect of her marriage, he
would have cared less. But she came in that very day in glee at the
sour, critical looks with which some envious young women of the church
had followed her; and when her mother called her up stairs to look at a
trunkful of embroidered under-clothing which she had kept for this
crisis, he could hear Kitty's delighted chatter and giggle for an hour.
Evidently her cup of pleasure was full for that day. Was his little girl
vulgar, feeble in both heart and mind, as her mother said?

Kitty was on trial that day. Miss Muller called and swept her off to the
Water-cure in the afternoon. She meant to interest her in the
Reformatory school for William's sake. She began by explaining the
books, and the system of keeping them. "It is my brother's wish you
should keep the accounts," she said.

"Accounts! oh yes, of course."

The tone was too emphatic. Miss Muller looked up from the long lines of
figures and found Kitty holding her eyes open by force. Evidently she
had just had a comfortable nap.

Whereupon Maria began to patiently dilate on the individual cases of
the boys to be reformed; and terrible instances they were of guilt and
misery.

"She whimpered a little," she said afterward to her brother. "I'll do
her justice: she did, a little. But they ought to have brought tears
from a log; an